Monday, September 08, 2008

 

Battle of the Resume? "Community Organizer" vs. "Miss Congeniality"

The Republican Party has decided that Barack Obama's Resume before ever achieving elected office is important. They've mocked his three years as a "community organizer" and chanted "zero" when Rudy Guiliani asked about Obama's experience.

So let's compare resume's of what each of these 40-something year-olds did between high school graduation and being elected to public office.

Sarah Palin:

In 1984, Palin won the Miss Wasilla Pageant,[9][10] then finished second in the Miss Alaska pageant,[11] at which she won a college scholarship and the "Miss Congeniality" award.[12]

Palin spent her first college semester at Hawaii Pacific College, transferring in 1983 to North Idaho College and then to the University of Idaho. She attended Matanuska-Susitna College in Alaska for one term, returning to the University of Idaho to complete her Bachelor of Science degree in communications-journalism, graduating in 1987.[14][15]

In 1988, she worked as a sports reporter for KTUU-TV in Anchorage, Alaska.[16] She also helped in her husband’s family commercial fishing business.[17]

That's it. Everything she did before becoming a town council member in Wasilla Alaska in 1992.

_____________________________________________________

Barack Obama

Following high school, Obama moved to Los Angeles, where he studied at Occidental College for two years.[9] He then transferred to Columbia University in New York City, where he majored in political science with a specialization in international relations.[10] Obama graduated with a B.A. from Columbia in 1983, then worked for a year at the Business International Corporation[11] and then at the New York Public Interest Research Group.[12][13]

After four years in New York City, Obama moved to Chicago to work as a community organizer for three years from June 1985 to May 1988 as director of the Developing Communities Project (DCP), a church-based community organization originally comprising eight Catholic parishes in Greater Roseland (Roseland, West Pullman, and Riverdale) on Chicago's far South Side.[12][14] During his three years as the DCP's director, its staff grew from 1 to 13 and its annual budget grew from $70,000 to $400,000, with accomplishments including helping set up a job training program, a college preparatory tutoring program, and a tenants' rights organization in Altgeld Gardens.[15] Obama also worked as a consultant and instructor for the Gamaliel Foundation, a community organizing institute.[16] In mid-1988, he traveled for the first time to Europe for three weeks then Kenya for five weeks where he met many of his Kenyan relatives for the first time.[17]

Obama entered Harvard Law School in late 1988 and at the end of his first year was selected as an editor of the Harvard Law Review based on his grades and a writing competition.[18] In his second year he was elected president of the Law Review, a full-time volunteer position functioning as editor-in-chief and supervising the law review's staff of 80 editors.[19] Obama's election in February 1990 as the first black president of the Harvard Law Review was widely reported and followed by several long, detailed profiles.[19] He graduated with a Juris Doctor (J.D.) magna cum laude from Harvard in 1991 and returned to Chicago where he had worked as a summer associate at the law firms of Sidley & Austin in 1989 and Hopkins & Sutter in 1990.[18][20]

The publicity from his election as the first black president of the Harvard Law Review led to a contract and advance to write a book about race relations.[21] In an effort to recruit him to their faculty, the University of Chicago Law School provided Obama with a fellowship and an office to work on his book.[21] The manuscript was finally published as Dreams from My Father in mid-1995.[21]

Obama directed Illinois Project Vote from April to October 1992, a voter registration drive with a staff of 10 and 700 volunteers that achieved its goal of registering 150,000 of 400,000 unregistered African Americans in the state, leading Crain's Chicago Business to name Obama to its 1993 list of "40 under Forty" powers to be.[22][23]

Obama taught constitutional law at the University of Chicago Law School for twelve years, as a Lecturer for four years (1992–1996), and as a Senior Lecturer for eight years (1996–2004).[24]

In 1993 Obama joined Davis, Miner, Barnhill & Galland, a 12-attorney law firm specializing in civil rights litigation and neighborhood economic development, where he was an associate for three years from 1993 to 1996, then of counsel from 1996 to 2004, with his law license becoming inactive in 2002.[12][25]

Obama was a founding member of the board of directors of Public Allies in 1992, resigning before his wife, Michelle, became the founding executive director of Public Allies Chicago in early 1993.[12][26] He served on the board of directors of the Woods Fund of Chicago, which in 1985 had been the first foundation to fund Obama's DCP, from 1993–2002, and served on the board of directors of The Joyce Foundation from 1994–2002.[12] Obama served on the board of directors of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge from 1995–2002, as founding president and chairman of the board of directors from 1995–1999.[12] He also served on the board of directors of the Chicago Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, the Center for Neighborhood Technology, and the Lugenia Burns Hope Center.[12]


That's it. Everything he did before winning a seat in the illinois legislature in 1996.

Clearly he has zero experience. And she's got tons.

Comments:
Did she work full-time or part-time as a Wasilla council member? I'll bet part-time with meetings held in the evenings so as not to interfere with the rest of her life. Did she "manage" Wasilla as an executive or did she have a city manager to do that for her?

She's probably a great person to have a beer with but we've already been there and done that!
 
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