Mindful of GrannyDoc's admonition, I'll try to build this up to be enough of a diary.
And yes.. sorry.. it's another Sarah Palin diary.
But seriously, something has been bugging me about Sarah Palin's brief bio. In light of the GOP's anemic talking points about Palin's background as a governing executive, some things just don't look so impressive on closer inspection.
The biggest one is her resume gap prior to being Governor of Alaska.
Now, there's no shame in having a few years where you maybe kind of sort of didn't really do much of anything... professionally. Especially given parenthood.
But we are talking about placing Sarah Palin next in line for the office of President of the United States! Given the awesome weight of that office, can I ask -- and I think it becomes fair to ask -- what exactly was Sarah Palin doing between January 2004 and November 2006 (nearly 3 years)?
Her Wikipedia page tries to gloss it over a bit with "Chair, Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission, 2003-2004." But that's a stretch of embellishment that would get me slapped hard by Human Resources if I tried to pull it; she resigned from that position - after less than a year of service - in mid-January, 2004.
Not quite the same thing as serving in 2003 through 2004.
Then she became Governor "in 2006". But again, read the fine print -- December 2006. I understand campaigning for Governor can be a daunting undertaking in itself, but still -- Joe Biden and Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama and John McCain are all running or ran for president while serving as US Senators.
If Sarah Palin is of accomplished timber to be running for Vice President of the United States, and if she is as Obama charitably describes an "up and coming public servant" -- then what exactly was this ambitious, up-and-coming Sarah Palin doing career-wise for:
nearly all of 2004,
entirely all of 2005,
and nearly all of 2006?
It's a bit rich that the GOP is attempting to claim, straight faced, that Palin -- Alaska's Governor for only 20 months and apparently no political, public service, or executive position in the prior 30 months -- is richer in experience than Barack Obama. Really: during the larger part of Palin's vague and somewhat "under-rug-swept" resume gap, Barack Obama was serving as a United States Senator.
Then there are the various anecdotes emerging about what "Mayor of Wasilla" really meant and didn't mean in terms of job function and scope... too much to chase down here, such as husband being cc'd on all emails, and so on -- but suffice it to say that being Mayor of a 7,000-person town (small enough that 900 votes gets you elected Mayor!) is not quite on par with being Vice President of the United States.
If this is not substantial enough to be a diary, let me know... thanks.