The Issue of Experience: Sarah Palin Versus Barack Obama
by Charles Coughlin
The liberals have been blasting Alaskan Governor Sarah Palin as if her experience stopped at her second place finish in an Alaskan beauty contest. There’s just one little problem with going after Governor Palin: she has better experience to be president than Barack Obama, and she isn’t the lead name on the ticket. John McCain of course is the presidential candidate for the GOP with decades more experience than Barack although many Republicans strongly question McCain’s devotion to conservative ideals. Let’s leave McCain out of the comparison however and just look at Sarah Palin versus Barack Obama and see who has the best experience.
One Sarah Palin biography notes “In 1984, Palin won the Miss Wasilla beauty contest (playing the flute), then finished second in the Miss Alaska pageant, at which she won a college scholarship and the “Miss Congeniality” award. Palin attended Hawaii Pacific College — now known as Hawaii Pacific University — in Honolulu for a semester in 1982, majoring in Business Administration. She transferred in 1983 to North Idaho College. In 1987, Palin received a Bachelor of Science degree in communications-journalism from the University of Idaho, where she also minored in political science. In 1988, she worked briefly as a sports reporter for KTUU-TV in Anchorage, Alaska. She also helped out in her husband’s family commercial fishing business.”
While most people might gloss over this, Sarah Palin has had TWO REAL JOBS in the real world, which is exactly two more jobs than many career politicians have had (including Barack Obama).
An Obama biography notes “Following high school, Obama moved to Los Angeles, where he studied at Occidental College for two years. He then transferred to Columbia University in New York City, where he majored in political science with a specialization in international relations. Obama graduated with a B.A. from Columbia in 1983, then worked for a year at the Business International Corporation and then at the New York Public Interest Research Group.”
These sound like liberal think tank organizations, which one might expect to recruit a somewhat bright quota-hire Black right out of school. They don’t however sound like real jobs in the real world. His biography goes on: “After four years in New York City, Obama moved to Chicago to work as a community organizer for three years from June 1985 to May 1988 as director of the Developing Communities Project (DCP), a church-based community organization… Obama also worked as a consultant and instructor for the Gamaliel Foundation, a community organizing institute. In mid-1988, he traveled for the first time to Europe for three weeks then Kenya for five weeks where he met many of his Kenyan relatives for the first time. Obama entered Harvard Law School in late 1988 and at the end of his first year was selected as an editor of the Harvard Law Review based on his grades and a writing competition. In his second year he was elected president of the Law Review, a full-time volunteer position functioning as editor-in-chief…”
It sounds like he was doing organizing work in support of liberal Democratic causes. When he showed up at Harvard (probably brought in as a quota-hire admission, but don’t hold your breath for anyone to admit this), he was elected editor-in-chief of the Harvard Law Review, suggesting he had a knack for winning popularity contests.
Barack went on to write a self-serving book “Dreams from my Father” which he used to launch his political career. The truth is Barack didn’t know his real father, who abandoned him and his mother two years after he was born. Obama’s father incidentally was a proponent of Marxist politics and died in a drunken auto accident.
The biography notes Barack graduated “from Harvard in 1991 and returned to Chicago where he had worked as a summer associate at the law firms of Sidley & Austin in 1989 and Hopkins & Sutter in 1990… In an effort to recruit him to their faculty, the University of Chicago Law School provided Obama with a fellowship and an office to work on his book. He originally planned to finish the book in one year, but it took much longer as the book evolved into a personal memoir. In order to work without interruptions, Obama and his wife, Michelle, traveled to Bali where he wrote for several months. The manuscript was finally published as Dreams from My Father in mid-1995.”
Now how many Whites would be given a lucrative book deal straight out of college with another college giving him an office to write the book, and he was allowed to slide the publication of the book for several years from 1991 until 1995. Even if a talented White were given a book deal, he would probably have to write the book in his parents’ basement, and he had better finish the book in three months or the money would evaporate. If anything, Barack’s life seems to have been one extremely cozy quota-hire position after another. After finishing his book, which was a masterful work of self-promotion, he was elected to be a member of the Illinois state senate from 1997 through 2004. Then he was elected to be a US Senator from Illinois, beginning that job on Jan. 4th, 2005. Just a few years later, without finishing one term as Senator, Obama began his campaign to run for president of the US.
Many people have an illusion that Obama voted against the Iraq War. It turns out he wasn’t a Senator in October 2002 when the vote to authorize the war was taken.
Sarah Palin’s biography notes “Palin began her political career in 1992, when she ran for Wasilla city council, supporting a controversial new sales tax and advocating ‘a safer, more progressive Wasilla.’ She won and served two terms on the council from 1992 to 1996. In 1996, Palin challenged and defeated incumbent John Stein for the non-partisan office of mayor, criticizing wasteful spending and high taxes. In the campaign, she highlighted her pro-life stance, her church work, and her membership in the National Rifle Association… As mayor, Palin reduced the mayoral salary, reduced property taxes by 40 percent, and increased the city sales tax to pay for a new indoor ice rink and sports complex…. In 2002, Palin made an unsuccessful bid for lieutenant governor, coming in second to Loren Leman in a five-way race in the Republican primary… Governor Murkowski appointed Palin to the Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission, where she chaired the Commission from 2003 to 2004, and also served as Ethics Supervisor. Palin resigned in January 2004 in protest over what she called the ‘lack of ethics’ of fellow Republican members…. In 2006, running on a clean-government platform, Palin defeated then-Governor Murkowski in the Republican gubernatorial primary…. In August, she declared that education, public safety, and transportation would be the three cornerstones of her administration. Despite spending less than her Democratic opponent, she won the gubernatorial election in November, defeating former Governor Tony Knowles 48.3 percent to 40.9 percent. Palin became Alaska’s first woman governor and, at 42, the youngest in Alaskan history… She took office on December 4, 2006.”
So Palin served as a mayor for two terms and as a governor for less than two years. In contrast, Obama never actually ran a city or a state. Obama only served in the Illinois state Senate (a relatively minor position) and then as a US Senator for a little over three years. One could argue that Obama has spent most of the last year running for president, with very little time spent doing his US Senate job.
So Obama has three years as a Senator and Palin has two years as a Governor. The average US Senator shows up sufficiently sober to vote on a bill now and then, often selling out the interests of the American public. Perhaps the most notable vote Obama made was on Senator John McCain’s Amnesty Bill. Obama voted to support that bill and to give Amnesty to an estimated 20 million illegal aliens. Thankfully the bill was defeated as massive pressure from the American people was brought to bear on the more responsible members of the Senate. Obama’s greatest claim to fame is his “Global Poverty Act” which from the very title sounds like a typical piece of idealistic liberal legislation which could ultimately cost US taxpayers a very large fortune.
Meanwhile, Sarah Palin has had to run an entire state with the greatest land area and the worst weather of all 50 states. Palin is also two years younger than Obama, even though her political accomplishments appear more impressive.
While Obama was looking to spend untold amounts of our tax dollars to fight global poverty, Ms. Palin actually reduced property taxes 40 percent while a mayor and as a governor approved a multi-billion dollar natural gas pipeline to Alaska’s North Slope that passes through Canada to the lower 48 states which may do more to help our energy crisis than anything the Senate has done lately. Being a governor for two years is definitely much more useful experience for a future president of the US than being a Senator for three years.
Any liberals attacking Sarah Palin as being “too inexperienced” to be Vice President had better take a good look at their presidential candidate, who appears to have no “executive” experience whatsoever. This is truly a case of the pot calling the kettle black.