If indeed experience matters when selecting candidates for the highest office in the land, if not the highest offices in the world, then let’s put this experience issue into perspective.
Alaska Governor Sarah Palin has significant experience, but probably not enough to be elected to the presidency were she the primary candidate…which she is not. Still she has more relevant experience than Barack Obama, who seeks to be our next president.
It is a fact that from the time Barack Obama was sworn in as a United State Senator, to the time he announced he was forming a Presidential exploratory committee, he logged 143 days of experience in the Senate. That’s how many days the Senate was actually in session and working.
If you worked for McDonald’s, you couldn’t make it to district manager after 143 days. No hospital would make you chief of surgery after 143 days of experience as a surgeon, even if you were a brilliant surgeon. If you were a teacher, even an extraordinary one, you wouldn’t be elevated to superintendent of the school district after only 143 days of service. If you were a bank teller, even if you were a genius and an extraordinary leader, you’d never be elevated to become president of the bank after a mere 143 days.
Barack Obama is a promising young Democratic politician to be sure, but he’s not ready to be president of the United States.
Sarah Palin is equally a promising Republican politician, but she’s not ready to be president.
The difference is, Palin with more genuine experience than Obama, will serve with the only candidate who truly is ready to be president, and over time, her combined experience will ready her for the oval office one day. There is nowhere near the raw risk associated with a Vice President Palin, as there is with a President Obama Think about it. We are not voting for the next American Idol here.
Popularity: 1% [?]
Palin isn’t just anyone’s VP. She would be the heart beat of a 72 year old away from becoming leader of the free world. That’s truly a frightening thought with McCain’s history of cancer and her lack of foreign policy experience (able to see Russia from a remote Alaskan island). She, more than any VP candidate in recent history, should be ready to take the oath of office to be president on day 1. You yourself said she “has significant experience, but not enough to be elected to the presidency…”
This election is about the top of the ticket and their judgments. Their choices of VP say everything you need to know about each one’s judgment and putting “country first”.
SEN. JOHN MCCAIN: As a politician, I am instinctive, often impulsive.
JUDY WOODRUFF: McCain goes on to say, “I don’t torture myself over decisions. I make them as quickly as I can, quicker than the other fellow, if I can. Often, my haste is a mistake, but I live with the consequences without complaint.” But that quick-to-decide approach gives pause to some. [..]
FORMER SEN. GARY HART (D), Colorado: On a scale of pure intuitive, pure impulsive versus pure cerebral, pure analytical, I’m putting him very much on the former end.
This style may work in the senate when he’s one of 100 where his impulsiveness is blunted. We have suffered through 8 years of a president with the same decision making style. Can we really afford another four years?