Politicians have to get their start somewhere

I have noticed that the Democrats, and particularly the Obama campaign, seem to be overly obsessed with Sarah Palin's starting job in politics. Before she became governor of the state of Alaska, she was the mayor of Wasilla, a small town in that state.

Literally minutes after McCain announced that Palin was his running mate, Obama campaign spokesman, Bill Burton, had this to say about Sarah Palin:

Today, John McCain put the former mayor of a town of 9,000 with zero foreign policy experience a heartbeat away from the presidency.

The key word in that statement is "former." She may have been the mayor of Wasilla, population 9,000, but she is now the governor of Alaska, population 685,000. Compared to many other states, that isn't a lot of people either, but keep in mind that in 2004, Democrats seriously flirted with making the governor of Vermont (pop. 620,000) their standard bearer. You know, Ronald Reagan was the former president of the Screen Actors Guild, but he moved on from there. The Democrats' beloved Jimmy Carter started out on various school and library boards before serving as a Georgia state senator, but he moved on from there.

Then, just yesterday, Barack Obama himself played up this unfair distortion during a CNN interview:

My understanding is that Gov. Palin’s town, Wassilla, has I think 50 employees. We've got 2,500 in this campaign. I think their budget is maybe 12 million dollars a year – we have a budget of about three times that just for the month.

Uh, yeah... Senator Obama, once again, I guess someone must remind you and your campaign that Sarah Palin is not the mayor of Wasilla anymore; she is the governor of one of our 50 states... that's 50 states, Senator; not 57. I am willing to bet that even a sparsely populated state like Alaska has more than 2,500 employees and more than $36 million for a monthly operating budget. If you do the math, that works out to around $432 million that the Obama campaign works with on a yearly basis. Meanwhile, government expenditures in the state of Alaska for FY2007 were $5.5 billion. None of this money could be spent without the signature of the governor. That would be Sarah Palin. If Obama really wants to compare budgets and expenditures, then he should be honest and refer to the entire state of Alaska, and not just the town of Wasilla. Palin is past that gig.

I am having a ball watching the Obama campaign tying itself into knots trying to deal with this curveball that McCain has thrown their way.

Good Day to You, Sir