Submitted by Leesburg VA, Sep 11, 2008 18:43

All agree that John McCain has more experience than Barack Obama. However, some argue that Sarah Palin's experience equals, or even surpasses Obama's. This is false. When we construct a straightforward, unbiased measure of experience we find: McCain is 5 times more experienced than Obama, and Obama is 10 times more experienced than Palin. Obama and Palin are not roughly equal: Obama's experience advantage over Palin is larger than McCain's over Obama. Here is the reasoning behind these figures. We define experience as the total number of people governed times years in office. For mayors, governors, and presidents, the number of people governed is simply the population of the entity governed. For city council members, representatives, and senators, the number governed is the size of the entity governed divided by the number of fellow legislators. We will use the following 2007 population estimates for simplicity, rather than the figures for each year someone was in office: Population of U.S.: 301,139,947 Population of Illinois: 12,852,548 Population of Alaska: 683,478 Population of Wasilla: 9,780 Here is what the experience of each candidate would be in January 2009: Joe Biden: 36 years U.S. Senate John McCain: 4 years U.S. Rep.; 22 years U.S. Senate Barack Obama: 8 years Illinois Senate; 4 years U.S. Senate Sarah Palin: 4 years Wasilla city council; 6 years Wasilla mayor; 2 years Alaska Governor There are 100 U.S. Senators, 435 U.S. reps, 57 Illinois senators, and (at a guess, which will not affect the outcome much) 5 Wasilla city council members. Therefore we get the following experience for each candidate: Joe Biden: 36*(301,139,947/100) = 108,410,381 John McCain: 4*(301,139,947/435) + 22*(301,139,947/100) = 69,019,891 Barack Obama: 8*(12,852,548/57) + 4*(301,139,947/100) = 13,849,464 Sarah Palin: 4*(9,780/5) + 6*9,780 + 2*683,478 = 1,433,460 And thus, Joe Biden is 1.6 times more experienced than John McCain. John McCain is 5.0 times more experienced than Barack Obama. Barack Obama is 9.7 times more experienced than Sarah Palin.

Note: Comments are screened, and in some cases edited, before posting. We reserve the right to reject anything we find objectionable.