Alaska is Small

Of course it's a big state. But when we talk about leadership experience, about executive experience, we are talking about people, not land. How do you lead people? How do you manage competing interests of the population? Certainly, a small-town mayor has to deal with competing interests, but we generally believe that you need to know how to manage something bigger than a small town- like a state.

But Alaska, let us remember, is about 680,000 people. Riordan, mayor of Los Angeles, city of over 3,800,000, would have been a better pick- a city more than four times larger than Alaska. Certainly, George II won with Cheney, from a state with fewer people than Alaska. But let us remember that not only did Cheney have ample experience leading on the national level, but also that he was not being touted as bringing executive experience to the ticket, as George II had already been governor of Texas.

Truly, people vote the top of the ticket, not the bottom. But the argument that she brings executive experience is baseless. We now have a candidate who has more international experience than any other Presidential candidate in history. Obama has grown up overseas and in the multiethnic state of Hawaii. He is the son of Kenyans. He uniquely understands the needs of the rest of the world, and we have seen that he can uniquely restore America's positive perception in the world. It's about international Hawaii, and not Alaska. Obama: the voice of leadership and experience.