I'm not saying the lack of experience is the positive, I'm saying the limited exposure to Washington filth is a positive. How or why Obama was admitted to Columbia is irrelevant to me, as is Bush's tenure at Yale. I don't care about either. What I care is what I feel the candidate brings to the table in terms of goals, ideas, etc.
Also, I'm not looking at experience in terms of years, but what's accomplished in the given time. In Bush's case I didn't like what he accomplished in his time as Texas' governor. More importantly, I didn't like the ideas he campaigned upon. Essentially there were no ideas, just vague talk of family values and morals.
I see what you're getting at with the comparison of an asst. copy editor, but I look it more like this: would you rather have a gladhander who's been around the block and thus has a lot of backs to scratch as publisher, or someone with limited experience but good character and work ethic? That's how I see Obama. He doesn't owe a lot of people favors, which means getting right down to business as opposed to paying back debts his first year in office. And that "business" as he sees it is what I like about him: the ideas he brings. He was never part of the Iraq bandwagon, he wants to get us out of the financial and ideological sinkhole and refocus on domestic issues.