Politivity

I’ve been thinking for days about the experience issue. Maybe experience doesn’t matter. After all, who has experience being President except for those currently or formerly holding the office?

Or perhaps acheiving the office of U.S. Senator or Governor of a state says something about the tenaciousness of a person, which in and of itself is indicative of qualities needed in the Oval Office.

But something about comparing the relatively similar amounts of time that both Barack Obama and Sarah Palin have served in elected office still didn’t sit right with me.

That’s when I realized that experience is not about time - it’s about performance.

Think about it - you can hold any position for a long amount of time, but if you suck at it - are you really experienced?

I’m not saying Obama sucks at his job. I just think that he’s had years in the U.S. Senate to do something different, but he hasn’t. I would say the same thing about many Republican senators as well. Overall, I’ve been largely disappointed with most Senators.

Obama has done his freshman Senator duty diligently. Freshmen Senators aren’t supposed to make splashes or waves. They’re supposed to follow the party line and pay their dues.

Sarah Palin doesn’t care about paying party dues. She’s taken on Republicans! And thank goodness. I want this party rid of some of the weasels that have attempted to lead it!

Palin didn’t even wait until she was Governor. When she was mayor, she cut her salary and reduced property taxes by 60%. Later, she was appointed as Ethics Commissioner of the Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission. She faced resistance in that role and resigned in protest over the corruption going on in Alaska politics. The Alaskan people must have liked someone who would take such a risky stand - they went on to elect her Governor of Alaska in 2006.

As Governor, she has accomplished much in her first 1.5 years of office, including:

• Fulfilled her plan create a new sub-cabinet group of advisers to address climate change and reduce greenhouse gas emissions within Alaska. (I’m a global warming skeptic, but this post is about performance instead of policy).
• Presented the Alaska Gasline Inducement Act (AGIA) to build a natural gas pipeline from the state’s North Slope. This legislation negated a deal by the previous governor to grant the contract to a coalition including her husband’s employer, BP. The law was later passed by the legislature, and signed by Palin into law.
• Sold a jet purchased by the previous Republican gubernatorial administration. The jet was purchased for $2.7 million by Governor Murkowski. Under Palin, the jet was placed on eBay and sold for $2.1 million.
• Proposed a $1,200 rebate to Alaskans as a result of increased revenues due to the taxes on gas, which spiked this past summer and spring.

For more on what Palin has done, visit the official website of the Governor’s office of Alaska.

Palin isn’t perfect, and I don’t agree with her on everything. There are questions about the so-called “Bridge to Nowhere” and her decision to keep a failing state-run dairy business open. She also expanded the operating state budget. She did make some spending cuts, but the spending was so inflated by previous administrations, it would almost be ridiculous not to.

Let’s take a look at Obama.

• In the State Senate, he sponsored a law increasing tax-credits for low income citizens, and helped pass an ethics bill called the Gifts Ban Act.
• Also in the State Senate, Obama is often credited with a unanimous bill that required police officers to monitor racial profiling. But there are some who say the real work was done by law enforcement and lawyers.
• He was involved in death penalty reforms in Illinois.
• He voted against a bill requiring medical assistance to be given to fetuses who survived abortion procedures.
• In the U.S. Senate, he cosponsored the Secure America and Orderly Immigration Act, but the bill was officially introduced by Senators John McCain and Ted Kennedy. He co-sponsored many other bills, but bills can have several co-sponsors.
• He worked with Republican Senator Dick Lugar on the Lugar-Obama initiative, which expanded the Nunn-Lugar cooperative threat reduction to include conventional weapons. The Nunn-Lugar is an initiative dating back to 1992 which seeks to reduce weapons of mass destruction in former Soviet Union countries. The Lugar-Obama was passed and subsequently signed by President Bush.
• Was the primary sponsor of the Democratic Republic of the Congo Relief, Security, and Democracy Promotion Act, which President Bush signed into law.
• Introduced the Iraq War De-Escalation Act of 2007.

So, yes, Obama has accomplished some things in his career. No one has said he has no experience, just not a lot. The real problem is that he hasn’t done what he says what he wants to do as President. He talks about hope and change. But giving up on the Iraq war isn’t hope. And voting with the Democrats isn’t real change. He wants to change Washington, but remember, Democrats control both the House and Senate in the current U.S. Congress.

Some of the accomplishments above came with the help of Republicans and even President Bush to sign legislation into law, but by Obama’s own campaign stance, he doesn’t want more of the same - meaning a Bush administration.

Real change is about changing the corrupt nature of how things get done in Washington (and yes, by both parties). And, it’s about changing the discourse. Obama has had plenty of opportunity to go up against corruption. Illinois State politics are historically some of the most corrupt in our nation’s history. His call for change would have so much more beef to it if he had, quite frankly, gone up against the establishment the way Palin did in Alaska.

But he didn’t. And when he got to Washington, he was a typical liberal Democrat. He may want a different party in the White House, but that’s not real change. That’s not bringing America together, as he has claimed in his speeches.

I’m not saying Barack Obama isn’t capable of it. I’m just saying he’s thus far missed wide open opportunities to achieve it. You know the Thomas Edison saying of genius being 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration? Well, Obama is inspiring, but so far, not so perspiring.

Palin, on the other hand, went after change even in the small town of Wasilla. She didn’t wait for a national stage. But now that she has it, I have a lot more confidence that she really can pull off a true change of the nature of getting things done in Washington - because she did it as a Mayor and now as a Governor.

Experience is more about the quality and not the quantity of time spent in office. Obama may have slightly more quantity, but Palin has more quality.