As the GOP struggles to maintain some vestige of the "experience" argument in the wake of Sarah Palin being named as John McCain's running mate, much has been made of Palin's executive experience as Governor of Alaska and Mayor of the town of Wasilla. Of course, if all executive jobs are equal to each other and greater than all non-executive government jobs, Palin has more experience than everyone else on both tickets. That John McCain, Palin's "executive" inferior, remains at the top of the ticket is sufficient to pooh-pooh that whole line of reasoning.
But, as it happens, Laura McGann of the Washington Independent has gone out to Alaska, to do the sort of vetting work that one would have thought the McCain campaign might have done. (One would have been wrong, of course.) And, as it turns out, not even Sarah Palin thinks all that much of her executive experience. Here's McGann, digging through the archives at the Mat-Su Valley Frontiersman:
I'm reading an article from October, 1996, in which a reporter named Laura Mitchell Harris asks Palin about her intentions for a shake up. How would she effectively run a city without experienced leaders? "It's not rocket science," Palin said, "It's $6 million and 53 employees."