http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5hj0INfou9GhMYE2nyalH5O9dKRUwD92UPOLG5McCain's Obama-Palin comparison falls shortWASHINGTON (AP) — Republican presidential candidate John McCain says his vice presidential pick, Sarah Palin, was already an experienced government official while his Democratic rival, Barack Obama, was working as a community organizer.
She wasn't. Palin was finishing college, getting married and working as a TV sportscaster when Obama was directing a church-based community group on Chicago's South Side in 1985-88.
McCain sought to make the comparison in an appearance on Fox News Sunday, criticizing Obama as too inexperienced to be in the White House despite his choice of a running mate who's also being called too unseasoned for that role.
Challenged about his vice presidential choice, McCain said as governor of Alaska for the last two years, Palin "has had enormous responsibilities, none of which Senator Obama had." Later, McCain elaborated that "as a governor, she has had executive experience. She didn't sit in the state legislature."
The same contrast could be made with McCain himself, whose entire 26-year political career has been spent in Congress.
It's true that in recent years, more presidents have come from governorships than from legislative bodies. But it's a stretch to argue that running the statehouse in a small state is ideal preparation for the issues that will confront the next president, from wars in Iraq and Afghanistan to coping with a half-trillion-dollar budget deficit and serious energy and health-care problems.
In the same interview, McCain continued the theme, noting that "when she was in government, he was a community organizer."
That's incorrect. When Palin was first elected to the town council in Wasilla, Alaska, in the fall of 1992, Obama was wrapping up work in Chicago on a voter-registration drive. When that job ended, he joined a Chicago law firm and became a lecturer at the University of Chicago law school, and the Chicago Tribune picked him as one of "25 Chicagoans on the road to making a difference."
Obama's community organizing career had come years earlier, in 1985-88.