Obama: Campaigning Counts as Executive Experience, Right?
Last night, Barack Obama was challenged by Anderson Cooper to respond to the claim that Sarah Palin has more executive and otherwise applicable experience than he does. After completely leaving out her current status as a state governor, he then attests that campaigning counts as executive experience. If this is the best argument Obama has, then attacks on Palin's inexperience might not be such a good idea, unless the Obama campaign enjoys seeing their golden boy embarrass himself.
Notice how he slyly referred to Palin using her former role as mayor of Wasilla (er, "Wasilly"). As governor of Alaska, she runs a government employing 25,000 people. As for the post-Katrina bit, even if Obama introduced a bill that ended up passing, it still would give him no experience managing disasters. Legislators don't have to do this; they don't have to make decisions that will cost or save lives during a disaster. Mayors, governors, and local emergency services do.
His examples are completely unfounded, and the premise of his argument just doesn't hold up. Running for office isn't executive experience, because Obama isn't his own campaign manager. You think the messiah himself sits and makes phone calls, handles the budget, coordinates the attack ads, and manages schedules? He's got a CEO to do that for him.
Hope!
Cooper: "Some Republican critics say, you don’t have the experience to handle a situation like this [Hurricane Gustav]. They’ve in fact said that Governor Palin has more executive experience as mayor of a small town and as governor of a big state like Alaska. What’s your response?"Let me introduce you to something I'll refer to as "the Obama Ratio." If Barack is speaking without a teleprompter or a prepared speech, this is the number of times he says "uh..." to the number of actual sentences he completes. In this answer, it's 8:3. It's a wonder he couldn't really answer the question.
Obama: "Well, you know, my understanding is that, uh, Governor Palin’s town of Wasilly [sic] has, uh, 50 employees, uh, we’ve got 2500, uh, in this campaign. I think their budget is maybe $12 million a year. Uh, uh, we have a budget of about three times that just for the month. Uh, so I think that, uh, our ability to manage large systems, uh, and to, uh, execute, uh, I think has been made clear over the last couple of years. Uh, and certainly, in terms of, uh, the legislation that I’ve passed just dealing with this issue post-Katrina, uh, of how we handle emergency management. The fact that, uh, many of my recommendations were adopted and are being put in place, uh, as we speak indicates to extent to which we can provide the kinds of support and good service that the American people expect."
Notice how he slyly referred to Palin using her former role as mayor of Wasilla (er, "Wasilly"). As governor of Alaska, she runs a government employing 25,000 people. As for the post-Katrina bit, even if Obama introduced a bill that ended up passing, it still would give him no experience managing disasters. Legislators don't have to do this; they don't have to make decisions that will cost or save lives during a disaster. Mayors, governors, and local emergency services do.
His examples are completely unfounded, and the premise of his argument just doesn't hold up. Running for office isn't executive experience, because Obama isn't his own campaign manager. You think the messiah himself sits and makes phone calls, handles the budget, coordinates the attack ads, and manages schedules? He's got a CEO to do that for him.
Hope!
Labels: Election 2008, Sarahcuda