McCain is launching an ad campaign with the theme that Alaska governor Sarah Palin is “more qualified than Obama” to be president of the United States:
The campaign announced: “The McCain campaign will launch a television ad directly comparing Gov. Palin’s executive experience as a governor who oversees 24,000 state employees, 14 statewide cabinet agencies and a $ 10 billion budget to Barack Obama’s experience as a one-term junior senator from Illinois.”
Obviously, the claim is absurd on its face; that said, look at how McCain’s use of language aids the absurdity. He leaves out the fact that Palin is also in her first term. He uses the adjective “junior” instead of “U.S.” to describe Obama, thus downplaying the fact that Obama has national experience while Palin has none. And he omits both Palin’s experience before being elected governor (mayor of Wasilla, a tiny town in Alaska where she was born and raised), and Obama’s experience before being elected U.S. senator (he served two full terms as Illinois state senator, and part of a third, resigning from his third term after he was elected to the U.S. Senate).
The above is not the full extent of Obama’s relevant experience:
…Once elected, Obama gained bipartisan support for legislation reforming ethics and health care laws.[28] He sponsored a law increasing tax credits for low-income workers, negotiated welfare reform, and promoted increased subsidies for childcare.[29] In 2001, as co-chairman of the bipartisan Joint Committee on Administrative Rules, Obama supported Republican Governor Ryan’s payday loan regulations and predatory mortgage lending regulations aimed at averting home foreclosures,[30] and in 2003, Obama sponsored and led unanimous, bipartisan passage of legislation to monitor racial profiling by requiring police to record the race of drivers they detained and legislation making Illinois the first state to mandate videotaping of homicide interrogations.[29][31]
Obama was reelected to the Illinois Senate in 1998, and again in 2002.[32] In 2000, he lost a Democratic primary run for the U.S. House of Representatives to four-term incumbent Bobby Rush by a margin of two to one.[33][34]
In January 2003, Obama became chairman of the Illinois Senate’s Health and Human Services Committee when Democrats, after a decade in the minority, regained a majority.[35] During his 2004 general election campaign for U.S. Senate, police representatives credited Obama for his active engagement with police organizations in enacting death penalty reforms.[36] Obama resigned from the Illinois Senate in November 2004 following his election to the US Senate.[37]
The answer to who is more qualified to be president isn’t even open to question. It isn’t arguable. Obviously, McCain will argue the point anyway, but that doesn’t make it a matter of opinion, any more than the roundness of the earth is a matter of opinion, regardless of how much “evidence” some folks present to prove that it’s flat.
Barack’s claimed Illinois Senate legislative achievements were aided by a wizard behind the curtain. Todd Spivak:
A specific example of legislation given to Barack on the very day of it’s passage, from David Freddoso:
CBSNews.com: