Obama, Palin, and Their Sixteen Years of Experience

Let me get this straight. Senator Barack Obama is qualified to be the President of the United States, but Governor Sarah Palin is unqualified to be the Vice President of the United States. ... the party that a mere twelve hours before had nominated a former state legislator from the south side of Chicago with zero foreign policy experience for the presidency. That is rich.

As Governor of Alaska, Governor Palin presides over a $6.6 billion budget and thousands of state employees. She is the only governor in America that shares a border with Russia and Canada, which requires some foreign policy experience given the thawing of the Arctic Ice and the current race by the U.S., Canada, and Russia to claim the now available oil and gas deposits. Because Alaska is a vital energy producing state, Governor Palin quickly has earned her stripes in advancing an energy agenda that helps free the U.S. from its dependence on foreign oil. She spurred the development of a new pipeline from Alaska to the continental United States. As Governor, she traveled to the Middle East to gain a better perspective on the issues there and to support America's troops in Iraq, including her oldest son.

Just as with the Illinois State Senate, Senator Obama oversees a handful of staff and a small office budget. In his three and a half years in the U.S. Senate, based on the lack of accomplishments listed during the Democrat National Convention, Senator Obama hasn't done much. Given that he has spent the last year and a half campaigning for the presidency, such a lack of outcomes isn't that surprising. Senator Obama has toured foreign countries, including the Middle East.

It is interesting that of all the Presidents since Taft, the one President with the weakest resume is Herbert Hoover.

William Howard Taft (September 15, 1857 – March 8, 1930) was an American politician, the twenty-seventh President of the United States, the tenth Chief Justice of the United States, a leader of the progressive conservative wing of the Republican Party in the early 20th century, a pioneer in international arbitration and staunch advocate of world peace verging on pacifism, and scion of a leading political family, the Tafts, of Ohio. Taft served as the Solicitor General of the United States, a federal judge, Governor-General of the Philippines, and Secretary of War before being nominated for President in the 1908 Republican National Convention with the backing of his predecessor and close friend Theodore Roosevelt.

Thomas Woodrow Wilson (December 28, 1856—February 3, 1924),[1] was the twenty-eighth President of the United States. A leading intellectual of the Progressive Era, he served as President of Princeton University and then became the Governor of New Jersey in 1910. With Theodore Roosevelt and William Howard Taft dividing the Republican Party vote, Wilson was elected President as a Democrat in 1912. He proved highly successful in leading a Democratic Congress to pass major legislation that included the Federal Trade Commission, the Clayton Antitrust Act, the Underwood Tariff, the Federal Farm Loan Act and most notably the Federal Reserve System. [2][3]

Warren Gamaliel Harding (November 2, 1865 – August 2, 1923) was an American politician, and the twenty-ninth President of the United States, serving from 1921 to 1923, his term ending as he died from a heart attack at age 57. A Republican from Ohio, Harding was an influential newspaper publisher. He served in the Ohio Senate (1899–1903) and later as Lieutenant Governor of Ohio (1903–1905) and as a U.S. Senator (1915–1921).

John Calvin Coolidge, Jr. (July 4, 1872 – January 5, 1933) was the thirtieth President of the United States (1923–1929). A Republican lawyer from Vermont, Coolidge worked his way up the ladder of Massachusetts state politics, eventually becoming governor of that state. His actions during the Boston Police Strike of 1919 thrust him into the national spotlight. Soon after, he was elected as the twenty-ninth Vice President in 1920 and succeeded to the Presidency upon the death of Warren G. Harding. Elected in his own right in 1924, he gained a reputation as a small-government conservative.

Herbert Clark Hoover (August 10, 1874 – October 20, 1964), the thirty-first President of the United States (1929–1933), was a mining engineer and author. As the United States Secretary of Commerce in the 1920s under Presidents Warren Harding and Calvin Coolidge, he promoted government intervention under the rubric “economic modernization”. In the presidential election of 1928 Hoover easily won the Republican nomination.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt (January 30, 1882 – April 12, 1945), often referred to by his initials FDR, was the thirty-second President of the United States. Elected to four terms in office, he served from 1933 to 1945 and is the only U.S. president to have served more than two terms. He was a central figure of the 20th century during a time of worldwide economic crisis and world war. Roosevelt soon became a popular figure among New York Democrats. Reelected for a second term November 5, 1912, he resigned from the New York State Senate on March 17, 1913.[17][18] Franklin D. Roosevelt was appointed Assistant Secretary of the Navy by Woodrow Wilson in 1913. He served under Secretary of the Navy Josephus Daniels. In 1914, he was defeated in the Democratic primary election for the United States Senate by Tammany Hall-backed James W. Gerard. In 1928, as the Democratic Party presidential nominee in the 1928 election, Smith in turn asked Roosevelt to run for governor. While Smith lost the Presidency in a landslide, and was even defeated in his home state, Roosevelt was narrowly elected governor.

Harry S. Truman (May 8, 1884 – December 26, 1972) was the thirty-third President of the United States (1945–1953). As vice president, he succeeded Franklin D. Roosevelt, who died less than three months after he began his fourth term. During World War I Truman served as an artillery officer. After the war he became part of the political machine of Tom Pendergast and was elected a county judge in Missouri and eventually a United States Senator.

Dwight David Eisenhower (October 14, 1890 – March 28, 1969), nicknamed “Ike”, was a General of the Army (five-star general officer) in the United States Army and U.S. politician who served as the 34th President of the United States (1953–1961). During the Second World War, he served as Supreme Commander of the Allied forces in Europe, with responsibility for planning and supervising the successful invasion of France and Germany in 1944–45. In 1951, he became the first supreme commander of NATO.[1]

John Fitzgerald “Jack” Kennedy (May 29, 1917 – November 22, 1963), often referred to by his initials JFK, was the thirty-fifth President of the United States, serving from 1961 until his assassination in 1963. After Kennedy’s military service as commander of the Motor Torpedo Boat PT-109 during World War II in the South Pacific, his aspirations turned political, with the encouragement and grooming of his father, Joseph P. Kennedy, Sr. Kennedy represented the state of Massachusetts in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1947 to 1953 as a Democrat, and in the U.S. Senate from 1953 until 1960.

Lyndon Baines Johnson (August 27, 1908 – January 22, 1973), often referred to as LBJ, was the thirty-sixth President of the United States, serving from 1963-1969. A Democrat, Johnson succeeded to the presidency following the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, and after completing Kennedy’s term was elected President in his own right in a landslide victory in the 1964 Presidential election. Johnson served as a United States Representative from Texas from 1937–1949 and as United States Senator from 1949–1960, including six years as United States Senate Majority Leader, two as Senate Minority Leader and two as Senate Majority Whip.

Richard Milhous Nixon (January 9, 1913 – April 22, 1994) was the thirty-seventh President of the United States (1969–1974) and the only American president to resign from that office. He was also Vice President of the United States from 1953 to 1961. Amidst the outbreak of war in the early 1940s, he joined the United States Navy and served as a lieutenant commander in the Pacific during World War II. He was elected to Congress following his military service, specifically the House of Representatives, first representing California’s 12th Congressional district, and later the entire state as Senator. He was chosen by party nominee Dwight D. Eisenhower to be Vice President in 1952, a position he began serving in the following year, until 1961

Gerald Rudolph Ford, Jr. (July 14, 1913 – December 26, 2006) was the thirty-eighth President of the United States, serving from 1974 to 1977, and the fortieth Vice President of the United States serving from 1973 to 1974. He was the first person appointed to the vice-presidency under the terms of the 25th Amendment, and became President upon Richard Nixon’s resignation on August 9, 1974. Before ascending to the vice-presidency, Ford served nearly 25 years as Representative from Michigan’s 5th congressional district, eight of them as the Republican Minority Leader.

James Earl “Jimmy” Carter, Jr. (born October 1, 1924) was the thirty-ninth President of the United States, serving from 1977 to 1981, and the recipient of the 2002 Nobel Peace Prize. Prior to becoming president, Carter served two terms in the Georgia Senate and as the 76th Governor of Georgia, from 1971 to 1975.[1]

Ronald Wilson Reagan (February 6, 1911 – June 5, 2004) was the 40th President of the United States (1981–1989) and the 33rd Governor of California (1967–1975). Born in Illinois, Reagan moved to Los Angeles, California in the 1930s, where he was an actor, president of the Screen Actors Guild (SAG), and a spokesman for General Electric (GE). His start in politics occurred during his work for GE; originally a member of the Democratic Party, he switched to the Republican Party in 1962.

George Herbert Walker Bush (born June 12, 1924) served as the forty-first President of the United States from 1989 to 1993. Bush held a multitude of political positions prior to his presidency, including Vice President of the United States in the administration of Ronald Reagan (1981–1989) and director of the CIA.

William Jefferson Blythe III (born on August 19, 1946), later William Jefferson “Bill” Clinton,[1] served as the forty-second President of the United States from 1993 to 2001. He was the third-youngest president, older only than Theodore Roosevelt and John F. Kennedy. Without opposition in the general election, Clinton was elected Arkansas Attorney General in 1976.[16 Clinton was elected Governor of Arkansas in 1978, making him the youngest governor in the country at age thirty-two.

George Walker Bush; born July 6, 1946) is the forty-third and current President of the United States. He served as the forty-sixth Governor of Texas from 1995 to 2000 before being sworn in as President on January 20, 2001. His current term will end at noon (ET) on January 20, 2009.[4]

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