Ted,
Its more prestigious because you have more influence on what happens nationally.
Being one of 100? That's like being a penny. With governor, it is a full dollar, and the buck stop at governors desk.
And while Obama did not originate a ton of legislation, he did much more than nothing as your post suggests.
To be fair, there is a handful of influential senators. Obama is among the least influential Senators.
Also, you have to look at it another way. Everybody who runs for a political office sees him/herself as a future president. And everybody knows that the best stepping stone to becoming a president is being a governor. That's shy you see senators resigning to run for governor.
As for Palin, she's more about fluff and being present when the project is done while letting others do the heavy lifting.
Governor is the CEO. Obviously, she is not going to be welding a pipeline together, or changing toner in printers. Like CEOs have VPs, senior managers etc, governors have stuff, commissioners, secretaries, cabinet.
If you are a non-entity governor, you just keep sufficient number of senior stuff from previous administration(s) and you let them run thing following the law of inertia. If you are, however, a governor of Palin's caliber, that is, you go to your state capital with a plan, a mission, then you tell your senior stuff what the priorities are let them suggest approaches to achieve the priorities, then choose the approach to take, and eventually, make sure that the plan gets executed.
Now, there is a small problem with Palin pick which is that she has not been a governor for long enough. Ideally for her would have been to be picket about 4 years from now, after successful re-election.
But you can't fault Palin for the fact that she was picked when she was.
Now, to get anything close to the weight of 6 years as governor, you have to spend 20 to 30 years in Senate, so that you gain seniority, get choice committee assignments, and are in the position to make some impact.
Joe |
