A Weak Crutch

Between the non-answers and folksy smiles and winks, Sarah Palin unfortunately surprised me with her fairly cohesive thoughts and answers. Sure, she didn't say a lot, besides "experience as a mayor and governor of the BIGGEST state, Alaska..." and "Mavrick, Mavrick, Mavrick!" but I guess you can liken that to someone who would prefer to eat candy and popcorn for dinner as opposed to a full-balanced meal. Yes, Biden made some wince-ingly painful choices in words and responses, but at least he had clear, concise answers to the questions that Gwen asked.

Consider this question/answer:

IFILL: Let's talk conventional wisdom for a moment. The conventional wisdom, Governor Palin with you, is that your Achilles heel is that you lack experience... What is it really for you, Governor Palin?

PALIN: My experience as an executive will be put to good use as a mayor and business owner and oil and gas regulator and then as governor of a huge state, a huge energy producing state that is accounting for much progress towards getting our nation energy independence and that's extremely important...

[Note: She didn't answer Ifill's question, even in the next three paragraphs that I didn't include. For another 30 + seconds, Palin vomits about how there are tons of problems in America, but she and John McCain believe in America, so there Joe Biden, SO THERE.]

I started thinking, after about the thirteenth time Governor Palin leaned back on how her experience as governor of the country's biggest state should speak for itself, that she was putting a lot of weight on a pretty weak crutch. Just consider this.

Alaska may be the largest state in the country by land, but there are only 683,478 people living in the state. So, yes, she is the executive of fewer than one million people. Let's compare that to one of the many cities in the United States that are much larger in population than Alaska. Let's look at Los Angeles, California.

Los Angeles' population is 3,849,378. That means that the mayor of Los Angeles, Antonio Villaraigosa, has more executive experience than Governor Sarah Palin. He's even been mayor for longer than she has been governor of Alaska. The demographics in Los Angelas are much more diverse than Alaska, inferring that Mayor Villaraigosa probably deals with more diverse issues than Governor Palin. To top it of, Villaraigosa has previously held positions in the California State Assembly for the 45th District, has been the Speaker of the California State Assembly, and has been a Los Angeles City Councilman representing the 14th District.

Since I'm from Iowa, let's take Iowa as another example. Iowa has nearly 3,000,000 inhabitants, and our governor, Chet Culver, has been governor for as long as Palin has been governor of Alaska. But before that, Culver has experience in politics as a former Secretary of State in Iowa. Too political, a Palin supporter might quip, but Chet is quite down to earth - he is a former government and history teacher in Iowa high schools, the job he had previous to his election. Sure, we don't have a maritime border or land border with a different country, but I actually do not believe that, in the case of some type of international incident between, say Canada and Minnesota, that Governor Tim Pawlenty would be our go-to person. No, international incidents are handled on the federal level, so don't be fooled, Palin-lovers. This little-Miss-independent talks a lot of nothing, mixed with a pinch of exaggeration, and cooked into folksy perfection. Remember when the popular girl won the sixth grade class election, even though the other guy was way more qualified and he actually had clear plans on how to raise support to get a pop machine in the cafeteria? Yeah, don't let that happen again.

Just a few of the things on my mind about Sarah Louise Heath Palin.