On Experience: Obama v. Palin Not Even Close

I’m tired of hearing every other Sarah Palin fanatic compare her in terms of experience to Barack Obama. It seems a so obviously contrived and absurd tactic that even the blindly faithful should be able to see through it at a glance. Bottom-line, there’s as much comparison between the careers of Obama and Palin as there is between that of Ted Kennedy and Arnold Schwarzenegger. Experience isn’t limited to any one particular aspect of a person’s life such as, in this case, time spent in public office and the responsibilities of one particular job over another. Experience includes personal history, educational background, and basic intelligence.

Education-wise, Obama has a law degree. Not just any law degree, mind you, Harvard Law. Call it elitist if you will, but any Joe-Undergrad student with an eye on law school can tell you that anyone who gets into Harvard is bloody smart and make no mistake about it. Whilst at Harvard Obama gained notoriety as editor of the Harvard Law Review and was later elected president of the Law Review, yep, you guessed it, first black man to do so.
He wrote a book, he practiced law, he made a difference working with community organizations (as referred to mockingly by former NYC mayor and drag queen Rudolf Giuliani at the Republican National Convention). He was elected to the US Senate. He wrote another book. The list of his accomplishments are stunningly and endlessly impressive.

Obama’s political career officially began in 1997 in Illinois when he was elected to represent the state’s 13th District and its 800,000 residents. Illinois subsequently elected him to the US Senate in 2004. This year he was ranked as the 11th most powerful senator by Congress.org.

Sarah Palin? She graduated high school in Wasilla, Alaska then made a valiant effort to cram college in around her demanding beauty pageant schedule, finally earning her bachelor’s degree in communications on a Miss Congeniality scholarship 5 years later. That’s it on education.

After college Sarah was a part-time sports reporter and had other part-time jobs including working for her secessionist husband in-between giving birth to lots of Palins. Her political career started when she served on the Wasilla City Council from 1992 to 1996 at which time she was elected mayor of the same town of about 6,000 people. Palin termed-out as mayor in 2002 and ran unsuccessfully for a few state offices in Alaska until being appointed by the governor to the Alaska energy commission in 2003. She resigned from this post less than a year later on ethics principles. Subsequently, she worked for convicted felon Ted Stevens for 2 years and by all accounts had no ethics issues with that job. In 2007 Palin took up residence… well, at home, mostly, but she was officially allowed to sleep at the governor’s mansion in Juneau as Alaska’s governor.

All told, Palin’s experience as an elected official amounts to about 4.5 years so even by a strict time definition, Obama has 5.5 years on her. Add to that the disparity in population (yes, it’s absurd to compare Wasilla’s 6000 people to the Illinois 13th District’s 800,000, but how about to the entire state of Alaska at 700,000?)

But forget about quantity. It’s really all about quality. Presumably Palin’s been trying her best, but there really seems little focus or much intention to her haphazard political career. Obama hasn’t just been trying, he’s been doing, and doing a lot. An overachiever to be certain, he shoots for the moon and hits the stars so, frankly, a comparison between the two is really unfair.

Then why do her supporters keep making the claim that these two are on a par experience-wise? It makes little sense and I’m sure the outcry from Palinheads would be loud and fierce were anyone from the Obama camp to even attempt an apples-to-apples analysis with any seriousness. Keeping it vague, as they have, makes the weak talking-point they’re looking for. Unfortunately for them, even a broad-strokes examination reveals Obama as a man of rich experience, high intelligence and great substance while just a little peeling-back reveals Palin’s intellect, background, and political career to be the hollow onion that it is.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, October 15th, 2008 at 09:00 and is filed under Politics, Blogroll. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response or trackback from your own site.