Sarah Palin's experience: Checkmate

The McCain campaign has challenged Barack Obama's lack of experience.

by Mark Silva

DENVER - Credit Sarah Palin, governor of Alaska for two years and a former mayor of Wasilla, with the experience necessary to become president of the United States, perhaps - one of the criteria that John McCain said he'd require in his running mate.

If that's the case, then the McCain campaign will have to suspend its line of attack against Democratic rival Barack Obama, a member of the Senate for four years and former state legislator from Illinois. In its ads, the McCain campaign slams Obama as "dangerously unprepared'' for the presidency - with Republican National Committee ads labeling Obama as "the most inexperienced candidate of our times.''

But Palin?

McCain, senior senator from Arizona, turns 72 today, and stands to become the oldest American ever elected to a first term as president should he prevail over Obama on Nov. 4. So the 44-year-old whom McCain presents today as his running mate certainly offers a relative image of youthfulness, as well as a woman on the ticket - the first on a major party's presidential ticket since the Democrats tapped Geraldine Ferraro in 1984.

Yet, as McCain often has joked, one of the few requirements for the vice presidency is looking after the health of the president on a daily basis. So, should Palin find no breath on the mirror held under McCain's nose some day, is she ready to be president?

On the question of national security, the McCain campaign has offered Palin's control of the Alaska National Guard. Really? They say her son, a soldier and one of her five children, is bound for Iraq. One of McCain's sons already has served in Iraq.

"I don't know too much about her,'' Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison of Texas allowed in the round-robin of cable news interviews about McCain's pick today. "But maybe that's the good news,'' said the seasoned Republican senator from Texas who was said to be among McCain's potential running mates.

"The fact that she doesn't know the ways of Washington may be the best of all,'' Hutchison said in an interview aired by CNN -- calling Palin an "outside the Beltway'' candidate (and that's an understatement) "in her favor.''

Palin won the governor's office in Alaska with 115,000 votes. She served two terms on the Wasila city council in the 1990s and was elected mayor in 1999. She is a native of Idaho, and her family moved to Alaska when she was an infant.

She is a hunter, lifelong NRA member, snowmobiler and staunch conservative. She is said to favor mooseburgers.

Like Obama, Palin played high school basketball - captain of the Wasilla Warriors. Unlike Obama, she has been a beauty queen -- she placed second in the Miss Alaska beauty pageant in 1984.

Unlike McCain, who says he's never won any awards for "Mr. Congeniality'' in the Senate, she was "Miss Congeniality.''

Unlike Obama, her college education ended at the University of Idaho, where she earned a bachelor's degree in journalism.

Obama is a graduate of Harvard Law School.

Her husband Todd, is a native Eskimo and works in commercial fishing and oil drilling on the North Slope of Alaska -- a Steelworkers' Union member and snowmobile racer. They are celebrating their 20th anniversary today.

Their firstborn son, Track, joined the Army last year and is bound for Iraq in the infantry this fall -- "He'll be following the presidential camapign from afar,'' Sarah Palin said in her appearance with McCain in Ohio today, with Palin citing her pride in him and "all of the men and women serving.''

They have three daughters, seven through 17, and earlier this year, Sarah Palin gave birth to their second son, born with Down syndrome.

Her youngest child's plight underscores Palin's commitment to the "pro-life'' cause which McCain has pledged to make a central concern of his administration. She was not dissuaded by prenatal testing of the child and has said of him: "I'm looking at him right now, and I see perfection.... Yeah, he has an extra chromosome. I keep thinking, in our world, what is normal and what is perfect?''

In the world of politics, what's a perfect vice presidential pick? Is it the pick that Obama made: Sen. Joe Biden of Delaware, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and decades of experience in Congress? Or is it Palin, ex-mayor of Wasilla?

And in the debate that McCain will wage with Obama this fall, the question of Obama's "preparedness'' for the presidency will have to be addressed with a certain recognition that McCain has tapped someone who might have to stand in as president who carries a lack of national credentials unseen in a long time.

When Obama was looking at Democratic Gov. Tim Kaine of Virginia as a possible running mate, Karl Rove, the "architect'' of President Bush's election campaigns, dismissed his experience - a governor for three years and ex-mayor of 103rd largest Richmond.

We're not sure where Wasilla (Pop. 5,550) ranks.

But Palin runs the Alaska National Guard.