30 Aug
Experience Math
Let’s see.
Republicans are claiming that Sarah Palin’s executive experience trumps Obama’s legislative experience. It should be possible, then, to figure out approximately how many years of legislative experience equal a year of executive experience.
Obama has been a legislator since 1997, so that’s 11 years.
Palin’s been a governor for 2 years.
So, 2 years of executive experience is greater than 11 years of legislative service.
That would be, where X is a year of executive experience and Y a year of leglslative experience:
2X > 11Y
That reduces to:
X > 6.5Y
So, this means that McCain, with 26 years of legislative experience, has the equivalent of 4 years of executive experience, so that means Palin has fully HALF the experience of McCain.
Joe Biden, on the other hand, has 35 years of legislative experience, which would be the equivalent of slightly less than 5.5 years of executive experience.
This would mean that the Republicans have a total of 6 years of executive experience, and the Democrats 7.5.
Hmm. Something can’t be right here.
Mathematically, the equation is not that Palin has the same experience as Obama, but that she has more experience. That means that all of the Senators’ numbers are less than the calculated values.
Say the multiplier is 8 (i.e., Palin’s experience would be equivalent to 16 years in the legislature). In that case, the numbers would be like this:
McCain | : | 3.25 |
Palin | : | 2 |
Total | : | 5.25 |
Obama | : | 1.625 |
Biden | : | 4.375 |
Total | : | 6 |
Er, um, well, that can’t possibly be right.
In fact, there is no way to say that Palin’s executive experience trumps Obama’s legislative experience without also demonstrating that the Obama/Biden team has more experience between them than the McCain/Palin team.
Unless, of course, you throw in POW years as equivalent to executive experience.
How much you wanna bet some Republican moron will suggest exactly that?