Pretzel Logic

As expected, questions about whether Sarah Palin's 14 years in elective office qualifies her for vice president have naturally turned to similar discussions about Barack's 14 years in office. This, of course, makes Barack a bit uncomfortable - so much so that he is now claiming he's qualified to be president because he's run for president for so long.

“Well, my understanding is that Governor Palin’s town of Wasilla has, I think, 50 employees. We’ve got 2,500 in this campaign. I think their budget is maybe $12 million a year. You know, we have a budget of about three times that just for the month. So I think that our ability to manage large systems and to execute I think has been made clear over the last couple of years,” Obama said.

Funny, but Sarah's been running the state of Alaska, with an annual budget of $7 billion for as long as Barack's been running for president. McCain, thrilled, I'm sure, to see Barack falling into the trap, offers a firm rebuttle.

“She’s been in elected office longer than Sen. Obama. She’s been the chief executive of the state that provides 20 percent of America’s energy; she has balanced budgets; she has had executive experience as governor, as mayor, as a city council member and PTA.

So she was in elected office when Sen. Obama was still a local community organizer. He’s never had one day of executive experience.”

To have brought a debate over leadership of the free world to this hair splitting point is a shame - the result of how far Barack has lowered the bar.

As McCain's campaign points out:

“For Barack Obama to argue that he’s experienced enough to be president because he’s running for president is desperate circular logic and its laughable. It is a testament to Barack Obama’s inexperience and failing qualifications that he would stoop to passing off his candidacy as comparable to Governor Sarah Palin’s executive experience managing a budget of over $10 billion and more than 24,000 employees,” said spokesman Tucker Bounds.