Obama versus Palin's experience

[Kelly the Dog]

The timelines are all the important events in the two candidates lives as far as education and work goes from the USA Today. I listed all events they did from high school on, and didnt really edit them. I added the populations.

 

1982 Palin graduates from Wasilla High School.

1983 Obama graduates from Columbia University with a Political Science degree. Works for Business International, a firm helping American businesses abroad.

1984

1985 Obama moves to Chicago and works for a non-profit involved in job training.

1986

1987 Palin gets a BA in journalism from U of Idaho. Works in utilities and media a few years.

1988 Obama enrolls in Harvard Law School.

1989

1990 Obama elected first black President of Harvard Law Review.

1991 Obama graduates Magna Cum Laude from Harvard, moves to Chicago as a civil rights lawyer and teaches Constitutional Law at University of Chicago (for 12 years)

1992 Palin elected to Wasilla City Council for two years. Wasilla, AK has a population of about 5400.

1993 Obama becomes associate at Chicago law firm representing community organizers, discrimination claims and voting rights cases (for three years)

1994

1995

1996 Palin elected Mayor of Wasilla. Pop about 5400. (Serves two full terms). Obama elected to Illinois State Senate. Serves eight years.

1997

1998

1999

2000 Obama loses bid for US Congress to incumbent Bobby Rush.

2001

2002 Palin loses her first statewide election, for Republican nomination for Lieutenant Governor in a five way race.

2003 Palin named by the Governor to the Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission.

2004 Palin resigns from Commission. Obama wins Democratic nomination for US Senate. Is Keynote Speaker at DNC. Wins Senate seat for Illinois.

2005 Obama named by Time Magazine as "one of the world's most influential people"

2006 Palin elected Governor of Alaska in November. Population approximately 670,000 in the state.

2007 Palin begins Governorship. Obama announces candidacy for President.

2008 Obama wins Democratic Nomination. Palin named VP candidate by John McCain.

 

http://www.usatoday.com/news/politics/elec...alin-poll_N.htm

http://www.usatoday.com/news/politics/elec...arack-obama.htm

[swede316]

Ok...Neither have alot of experience....Maybe the ticket should be Biden/Obama vs. McCain/Palin. The last thing the country needs is more lawyers

[Nanker]

So he's the affirmative action candidate, and she's just a working mom. Is that it?

[finknottle]

So he's the affirmative action candidate, and she's just a working mom. Is that it?

 

That's pretty much how he laid it out.

 

No side-by-side comparison of actual accomplishments. I wonder why? There is a track record for Palin's accomplishments as mayor and governor, short as the time may be. Surely the poster would like to illuminate us on how Obama reformed the Illinois political scene, all the difficult and momentus legislation he passed, and the wastefull spending he defeated. Shouldn't we see these things side-by-side too, or is it only about the schools they attended?

 

Aren't his accomplishments in Illinois and the US Senate a good barometer for what he would accomplish as president? If the One is going to remake the US the way he did Illinois, what does that mean?

[JK2000]

Here is how unimpressive being governor of Alaska is by the numbers-

 

Recent estimates say Alaska is home to 683,478 citizens. This means Sarah Palin governs fewer people than live in:

New York (8,274,527)

Los Angeles (3,834,340)

Chicago (2,836,658)

Houston (2,208,180)

Phoenix (1,552,259)

Philadelphia (1,449,634)

San Antonio (1,328,984)

San Diego (1,266,731)

Dallas (1,240,499)

San Jose (939,899)

Detroit (916,952)

Jacksonville (805,605)

Indianapolis (795,458)

San Francisco (764,976)

Columbus (747,755)

Austin (743,074)

and she barely edges out Fort Worth (681,818).

 

If you take a big picture look at the metropolitan areas that the mayor of any of these cities has to deal with and work with on a regular basis, it gets even bleaker. If Alaska was a metro area, it would be around the 75th largest. Many of these mayors, such as mayor Bill White of Houston, have had more years in office than her, are responsible for a larger and more diverse population of people, and often have as much if not more dealing with foreign dignitaries.

 

Puerto Rico has 3,913,055 people living on it. That's well over FIVE times the number of people whom Sarah Palin has 20 months experience governing. Gov. Aníbal Vilá has that and a longer public service than Sarah Palin. Would the right seriously consider him a reasonable candidate for vice president.

 

It is estimated there are about 304,995,000 of us living in this great land of ours. That's just over four hundred and forty-six (446) times the number of people Sarah Palin has governed.

 

All right, here's a fun fact - the heads of both the New York City Department of Education and the Los Angeles Unified School District have authority over more students than there are citizens Palin governs. Yeah, there are school districts that are bigger (1,014,058 and 727,319 students, respectively) than her state's entire population. These administrators are in charge of many of the same kinds of thing a governor is - setting a budget, delegating and appointing people, setting an agenda, twisting arms until people start working together. But can you imagine if someone nominated the Los Angeles School Superintendent to the office of Vice President?

 

It would take only 8 or 9 Invesco Field sized events for every man, woman, and child of Alaska to hear Barack Obama. That means he could talk to every single person in the state in less than a week (assuming we can fit more than one of those in a day.) He's raised money from several times more people than she has governed. 3,597,456 people voted for Barack Obama in the Illinois senate election. That's about 5 times more people than live in Alaska, and over 30 times the number of people that voted for the "the most popular governor in the country." To compare to the most popular governor on Daily Kos, Brian Schweitzer got 225,016 votes in his election, which is about twice as many as he did. If 70% of Montanans approve of Brian Schweitzer, that's about as many people as are in her entire state.

 

The 2005 gross state product of Alaska was $39.9 billion. That's about 0.3% of the GDP of the United States.

 

The US government (excluding the post office) employs just under 2 million Americans.

There are around 25 thousand people working for the state and local governments in Alaska. Now, here's something for the small government conservatives to chew on -

There's one federal employee for about every 150 US citizens.

The ratio is 1 state employee to 25 citizens in Alaska.

Percentage-wise, the Alaskan government under Sarah Palin is SIX times larger than the U.S. government. The ratio for California (which has about half a million state employees) is about 1:75. Gov. Sebelius runs Kansas with about 54,000 employees, giving her a ratio of about 1:50. Obviously, there's a lot of variation, but Alaska certainly seems to have one of the larger state bureaucracies on a per-capita basis. These numbers all came from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, and I don't think they include contractors.

 

I'd throw in some numbers comparing the Alaskan state government budget to the US government budget, or to some other states, but I ran into some complications. It seems some corporation-hating eco-nazi decided to push a windfall profits tax onto the Alaskan oil companies. What did the pinko scum do with all that hard-earned cash? Why, she gave it away to the "whiners" in the state who apparently were concerned with high gas prices. They each got $1200, and that's "on top of the annual dividend of about $2,000 that each resident could receive [in 2007] from an oil-wealth savings account."

The orchestrator of this downright socialist redistribution of wealth was none other than Sarah Palin. In fact, she apparently ran on the notion that incumbent Frank Murkowski gave too much of a break to the oil industry. It's important to note that when the election happened, Murkowski had an approval rating just below 20% and received no appreciable percentage of the vote. So the image of a valiant woman struggling against an all-powerful state governor is a bit of an overstatement.

 

I've looked around for videos of Palin in a debate. I found one, but the sound was kinda wonky for me, and the setting is faaaar from what she'll encounter in the veep debate. From what I can hear, she isn't exactly knockin em out of the park. Joe Biden has been holding his own in the most deliberative body in the in history for decades. Unless she starts studying hard and now and the huge numbers of foreign policy issues she seems to be totally oblivious of - the difference between Sunni, Shiite, and Kurd in Iraq, the issues surrounding nuclear proliferation in ex-soviet states, the issues surrounding spots like Darfur and Georgia, the world food situation, the status of various diseases like AIDS - then her VP debate against Joe Biden could be just embarrassing. She seems to be a fairly intelligent person, but 2 months is just over half a semester, and she needs to go back to school and pick up a whole 'nother degree.

[Hazed and Amuzed]

Here is how unimpressive being governor of Alaska is by the numbers-

 

Recent estimates say Alaska is home to 683,478 citizens. This means Sarah Palin governs fewer people than live in:

New York (8,274,527)

Los Angeles (3,834,340)

Chicago (2,836,658)

Houston (2,208,180)

Phoenix (1,552,259)

Philadelphia (1,449,634)

San Antonio (1,328,984)

San Diego (1,266,731)

Dallas (1,240,499)

San Jose (939,899)

Detroit (916,952)

Jacksonville (805,605)

Indianapolis (795,458)

San Francisco (764,976)

Columbus (747,755)

Austin (743,074)

and she barely edges out Fort Worth (681,818).

 

If you take a big picture look at the metropolitan areas that the mayor of any of these cities has to deal with and work with on a regular basis, it gets even bleaker. If Alaska was a metro area, it would be around the 75th largest. Many of these mayors, such as mayor Bill White of Houston, have had more years in office than her, are responsible for a larger and more diverse population of people, and often have as much if not more dealing with foreign dignitaries.

 

Puerto Rico has 3,913,055 people living on it. That's well over FIVE times the number of people whom Sarah Palin has 20 months experience governing. Gov. Aníbal Vilá has that and a longer public service than Sarah Palin. Would the right seriously consider him a reasonable candidate for vice president.

 

It is estimated there are about 304,995,000 of us living in this great land of ours. That's just over four hundred and forty-six (446) times the number of people Sarah Palin has governed.

 

All right, here's a fun fact - the heads of both the New York City Department of Education and the Los Angeles Unified School District have authority over more students than there are citizens Palin governs. Yeah, there are school districts that are bigger (1,014,058 and 727,319 students, respectively) than her state's entire population. These administrators are in charge of many of the same kinds of thing a governor is - setting a budget, delegating and appointing people, setting an agenda, twisting arms until people start working together. But can you imagine if someone nominated the Los Angeles School Superintendent to the office of Vice President?

 

It would take only 8 or 9 Invesco Field sized events for every man, woman, and child of Alaska to hear Barack Obama. That means he could talk to every single person in the state in less than a week (assuming we can fit more than one of those in a day.) He's raised money from several times more people than she has governed. 3,597,456 people voted for Barack Obama in the Illinois senate election. That's about 5 times more people than live in Alaska, and over 30 times the number of people that voted for the "the most popular governor in the country." To compare to the most popular governor on Daily Kos, Brian Schweitzer got 225,016 votes in his election, which is about twice as many as he did. If 70% of Montanans approve of Brian Schweitzer, that's about as many people as are in her entire state.

 

The 2005 gross state product of Alaska was $39.9 billion. That's about 0.3% of the GDP of the United States.

 

The US government (excluding the post office) employs just under 2 million Americans.

There are around 25 thousand people working for the state and local governments in Alaska. Now, here's something for the small government conservatives to chew on -

There's one federal employee for about every 150 US citizens.

The ratio is 1 state employee to 25 citizens in Alaska.

Percentage-wise, the Alaskan government under Sarah Palin is SIX times larger than the U.S. government. The ratio for California (which has about half a million state employees) is about 1:75. Gov. Sebelius runs Kansas with about 54,000 employees, giving her a ratio of about 1:50. Obviously, there's a lot of variation, but Alaska certainly seems to have one of the larger state bureaucracies on a per-capita basis. These numbers all came from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, and I don't think they include contractors.

 

I'd throw in some numbers comparing the Alaskan state government budget to the US government budget, or to some other states, but I ran into some complications. It seems some corporation-hating eco-nazi decided to push a windfall profits tax onto the Alaskan oil companies. What did the pinko scum do with all that hard-earned cash? Why, she gave it away to the "whiners" in the state who apparently were concerned with high gas prices. They each got $1200, and that's "on top of the annual dividend of about $2,000 that each resident could receive [in 2007] from an oil-wealth savings account."

The orchestrator of this downright socialist redistribution of wealth was none other than Sarah Palin. In fact, she apparently ran on the notion that incumbent Frank Murkowski gave too much of a break to the oil industry. It's important to note that when the election happened, Murkowski had an approval rating just below 20% and received no appreciable percentage of the vote. So the image of a valiant woman struggling against an all-powerful state governor is a bit of an overstatement.

 

I've looked around for videos of Palin in a debate. I found one, but the sound was kinda wonky for me, and the setting is faaaar from what she'll encounter in the veep debate. From what I can hear, she isn't exactly knockin em out of the park. Joe Biden has been holding his own in the most deliberative body in the in history for decades. Unless she starts studying hard and now and the huge numbers of foreign policy issues she seems to be totally oblivious of - the difference between Sunni, Shiite, and Kurd in Iraq, the issues surrounding nuclear proliferation in ex-soviet states, the issues surrounding spots like Darfur and Georgia, the world food situation, the status of various diseases like AIDS - then her VP debate against Joe Biden could be just embarrassing. She seems to be a fairly intelligent person, but 2 months is just over half a semester, and she needs to go back to school and pick up a whole 'nother degree.

 

 

You're wasting you're breath. Anyone who thinks that Palin is comparable to Obama is apparently set in their way.

[LongLiveRalph]

In general, "experience" to me is something that can be very overrated. You are not going to find much more political and foreign policy experience that you had with Dick Cheney, Don Rumsfeld, and Colin Powell....And look at where their vast "experience" took us...A misguided "big picture" plan that was fumbled along the way by hundreds upon hundreds of poor decisions and incorrect assumptions.

 

I just don't understand how McCain could choose such an inexperienced candidate for VP, when there are legitimate concerns about his age and health. It is not extremely far-fetched that whomever he selected as VP would be called into action, just based on US male mortality rates alone. It's sad that he made his selection (of a woman he's known for six months) while looking more at voting demographic rather than the best interests of the nation.

[JK2000]

In general, "experience" to me is something that can be very overrated. You are not going to find much more political and foreign policy experience that you had with Dick Cheney, Don Rumsfeld, and Colin Powell....And look at where their vast "experience" took us...A misguided "big picture" plan that was fumbled along the way by hundreds upon hundreds of poor decisions and incorrect assumptions.

 

I just don't understand how McCain could choose such an inexperienced candidate for VP, when there are legitimate concerns about his age and health. It is not extremely far-fetched that whomever he selected as VP would be called into action, just based on US male mortality rates alone. It's sad that he made his selection (of a woman he's known for six months) while looking more at voting demographic rather than the best interests of the nation.

 

I also don't understand how "executive experience", no matter how short lived or insignificant, automatically trumps the candidates ideas, intellect and vision.

[YellowLinesandArmadillos]

Here is how unimpressive being governor of Alaska is by the numbers-

 

Recent estimates say Alaska is home to 683,478 citizens. This means Sarah Palin governs fewer people than live in:

New York (8,274,527)

Los Angeles (3,834,340)

Chicago (2,836,658)

Houston (2,208,180)

Phoenix (1,552,259)

Philadelphia (1,449,634)

San Antonio (1,328,984)

San Diego (1,266,731)

Dallas (1,240,499)

San Jose (939,899)

Detroit (916,952)

Jacksonville (805,605)

Indianapolis (795,458)

San Francisco (764,976)

Columbus (747,755)

Austin (743,074)

and she barely edges out Fort Worth (681,818).

 

If you take a big picture look at the metropolitan areas that the mayor of any of these cities has to deal with and work with on a regular basis, it gets even bleaker. If Alaska was a metro area, it would be around the 75th largest. Many of these mayors, such as mayor Bill White of Houston, have had more years in office than her, are responsible for a larger and more diverse population of people, and often have as much if not more dealing with foreign dignitaries.

 

Puerto Rico has 3,913,055 people living on it. That's well over FIVE times the number of people whom Sarah Palin has 20 months experience governing. Gov. Aníbal Vilá has that and a longer public service than Sarah Palin. Would the right seriously consider him a reasonable candidate for vice president.

 

It is estimated there are about 304,995,000 of us living in this great land of ours. That's just over four hundred and forty-six (446) times the number of people Sarah Palin has governed.

 

All right, here's a fun fact - the heads of both the New York City Department of Education and the Los Angeles Unified School District have authority over more students than there are citizens Palin governs. Yeah, there are school districts that are bigger (1,014,058 and 727,319 students, respectively) than her state's entire population. These administrators are in charge of many of the same kinds of thing a governor is - setting a budget, delegating and appointing people, setting an agenda, twisting arms until people start working together. But can you imagine if someone nominated the Los Angeles School Superintendent to the office of Vice President?

 

It would take only 8 or 9 Invesco Field sized events for every man, woman, and child of Alaska to hear Barack Obama. That means he could talk to every single person in the state in less than a week (assuming we can fit more than one of those in a day.) He's raised money from several times more people than she has governed. 3,597,456 people voted for Barack Obama in the Illinois senate election. That's about 5 times more people than live in Alaska, and over 30 times the number of people that voted for the "the most popular governor in the country." To compare to the most popular governor on Daily Kos, Brian Schweitzer got 225,016 votes in his election, which is about twice as many as he did. If 70% of Montanans approve of Brian Schweitzer, that's about as many people as are in her entire state.

 

The 2005 gross state product of Alaska was $39.9 billion. That's about 0.3% of the GDP of the United States.

 

The US government (excluding the post office) employs just under 2 million Americans.

There are around 25 thousand people working for the state and local governments in Alaska. Now, here's something for the small government conservatives to chew on -

There's one federal employee for about every 150 US citizens.

The ratio is 1 state employee to 25 citizens in Alaska.

Percentage-wise, the Alaskan government under Sarah Palin is SIX times larger than the U.S. government. The ratio for California (which has about half a million state employees) is about 1:75. Gov. Sebelius runs Kansas with about 54,000 employees, giving her a ratio of about 1:50. Obviously, there's a lot of variation, but Alaska certainly seems to have one of the larger state bureaucracies on a per-capita basis. These numbers all came from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, and I don't think they include contractors.

 

I'd throw in some numbers comparing the Alaskan state government budget to the US government budget, or to some other states, but I ran into some complications. It seems some corporation-hating eco-nazi decided to push a windfall profits tax onto the Alaskan oil companies. What did the pinko scum do with all that hard-earned cash? Why, she gave it away to the "whiners" in the state who apparently were concerned with high gas prices. They each got $1200, and that's "on top of the annual dividend of about $2,000 that each resident could receive [in 2007] from an oil-wealth savings account."

The orchestrator of this downright socialist redistribution of wealth was none other than Sarah Palin. In fact, she apparently ran on the notion that incumbent Frank Murkowski gave too much of a break to the oil industry. It's important to note that when the election happened, Murkowski had an approval rating just below 20% and received no appreciable percentage of the vote. So the image of a valiant woman struggling against an all-powerful state governor is a bit of an overstatement.

 

I've looked around for videos of Palin in a debate. I found one, but the sound was kinda wonky for me, and the setting is faaaar from what she'll encounter in the veep debate. From what I can hear, she isn't exactly knockin em out of the park. Joe Biden has been holding his own in the most deliberative body in the in history for decades. Unless she starts studying hard and now and the huge numbers of foreign policy issues she seems to be totally oblivious of - the difference between Sunni, Shiite, and Kurd in Iraq, the issues surrounding nuclear proliferation in ex-soviet states, the issues surrounding spots like Darfur and Georgia, the world food situation, the status of various diseases like AIDS - then her VP debate against Joe Biden could be just embarrassing. She seems to be a fairly intelligent person, but 2 months is just over half a semester, and she needs to go back to school and pick up a whole 'nother degree.

 

You forgot to mention even metro Buffalo (900,000), now there is a slap... at who I am not sure.

[JK2000]

You forgot to mention even metro Buffalo (900,000), now there is a slap... at who I am not sure.

 

McCain should have picked Chris Collins!

[YellowLinesandArmadillos]

McCain should have picked Chris Collins!

 

 

LOL