TruthNews Commentary, September 3, 2008

Republican presidential candidate John McCain has chosen Alaska Governor Sarah Palin, as his vice presidential running mate. Palin, a 44-year-old first term governor, is a conservative on both social and economic issues. The Democrats immediately attacked her as too inexperienced to be the Vice President. The attacks highlight the inexperience of their own presidential nominee, Barack Obama.

John Kerry, the unsuccessful 2004 Democratic presidential candidate, said McCain "...has chosen somebody who has zero, zero experience in foreign policy. I mean, I am sure [Palin] is a terrific person. I am not attacking her. I think John McCain's judgment is once again put at issue because he has chosen somebody who clearly does not meet the national security threshold, who is not ready to be president tomorrow."

Kerry's comments about inexperience would also seem to apply to Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama, who has been a senator for only three and a half years and whose primary foreign policy experience has been to live in Indonesia while he was growing up. Obama is also a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Senators like Kerry seem to think that this provides foreign policy experience. But again, all the senators do is listen to testimony and grill nominees. You could get this kind of experience by reading the paper or listening to C-SPAN. A bigger question is, how has this foreign policy experience benefited Obama? Obama has made the naive point that he would meet with thugs and dictators like Iran's Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (pronounced "I'm a nut job") without preconditions. Ahmadinejad is the guy who has promised to destroy Israel and is pursuing the nukes to make his dream a reality.

Joe Biden, Obama's vice presidential running mate, is the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. He's been a senator for nearly forty years. How has his vast experience benefited him? Well, like many other Democrats, Biden voted for the Iraq war when it was popular but turned against the war when the going got tough (i.e., when Al Qaida decided to make it their central battleground. On September 9, 2007, two days before the General David Petraeus addressed the Senate, Biden stated that, "I really respect him, and I think he's dead flat wrong." Petraeus went on to lead the surge that resulted in the U.S. victory in Iraq, so apparently, Biden was the one who was dead flat wrong.

During the September 11, 2007 testimony by Petraeus, Biden stated that the question to be asked to determine progress was "Are we any closer to a lasting political settlement in Iraq at the national level today than we were when the surge began eight months ago?" He answered his own question by stating "In my judgment, I must tell you, based on my experience and my observation here, as well as in-country, the answer to...[the] questions is no." The subsequent year has demonstrated that Biden was dead wrong. So much for Biden's experience. Of course, Biden's foreign policy experience did enable him to plagiarize speeches by British Labor Party leader Neil Kinnock during Biden's 1987 presidential run.

Ronald Reagan had no foreign policy experience, but he brought down the Soviet empire. George W. Bush had no foreign policy experience, but he defeated Taliban government in Afghanistan and Saddam Hussein in Iraq and put Al Qaida on the run. Franklin Roosevelt had no foreign policy experience, but he defeated Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy, and imperial Japan in World War II. Woodrow Wilson had no foreign policy experience, but he defeated the German and Austrian empires in World War I.

Sarah Palin does have experience in something that neither Obama or Biden or even McCain has. She has experience in running a state. The president is, after all, the chief executive of the federal government. Being the chief executive means that the president has to run the vast federal bureaucracy. All senators do is make speeches and cast votes. The only executive experience they have, unless they're former governors or corporate CEOs, is running their own staff. These are not activities that prepare someone for executive responsibility.

Palin, on the other hand, has run Alaska for the last two years and cleaned up what was previously a corrupt state government. She initiated construction of a $26 billion natural gas pipeline to help lead America to energy independence. She signed major ethics reforms, championed reform to end the Congress earmark abuses and told to stop the "Bridge to Nowhere." Most importantly, Palin has strongly promoted oil and natural gas resource development in the Alaskan National Mosquito Refuge. Maybe she can talk McCain into drilling for oil there.

In her previous position as the mayor of Wasilla (population 6,715), she was praised for cutting property taxes by 40 population while improving roads and sewers and strengthening the Police Department.

Two years as a governor is probably better experience for the job as chief executive of the nation than Biden's 40 years as senator. It's certainly better than Obama's three and a half years in the senate. By the way, Ronald Reagan, George W. Bush, Franklin Roosevelt, and Woodrow Wilson were all state governors. None of them served in the senate.

Obama claims that he has executive experience because he's run his campaign, consisting of several thousand people at this point. By this logic, anyone who runs for president is qualified to be president by virtue of having run for president.

By attacking Palin for inexperience, the Democrats merely emphasize the inexperience of Obama. And unlike Palin, who has been nominated for the number two slot, the Democrats put their even more inexperienced guy at the head of the ticket.