According to presidential historians and scholars, Palin has the least experience and is the least credentialed person to appear on a major ticket in modern history. She has been governor of Alaska for 20 months and before that was mayor of a town whose population was fewer than 6,000 people during her tenure. She also served for a year on the state energy commission. For more details, read the full article here.

Many media outlets said Palin’s experience level was comparable to Obama’s, or they quoted Republicans as saying the same.

What they many times failed to include was the following:

She has only been governor for 20 months. Simply reporting that Palin is a first-term governer doesn’t tell readers how long a person has been in office. Many might not know that gubernatorial terms in Alaska are four years, or that she’s still in the first half of her first-term. Twenty months is different than 44 months.

She was a mayor, but her city had less than 6,000 people while she was in office. In population, Illinois is more than 19 times the size or Alaska, and it’s 2,000 times the size of Wasilla while Palin was mayor. Illinois contains the third largest city in the country, Chicago, a city that is more than four times larger than Alaska in population. Even if only Obama’s Illinois state senatorial district is used, it is roughly 35 times the size of Wasilla while Palin served.

“Not to belittle Alaska, but it’s different than the basket of issues you deal with in big, dynamic states,” said presidential historian Matthew Dallek.

The McCain campaign has been arguing that Palin is the only one with executive experience. Obama countered on Sept. 1, 2008 that he had been executive of a large campaign for two years:

“Well, my understanding is that governor Palin’s town of Wasilla has I think 50 employees,” he said. “We’ve got 2,500 in this campaign. I think their budget is maybe $12 million a year. You know, we have a budget of about three times that just for the month. So I think that our ability to manage large systems and to execute I think has been made clear over the last couple of years.” (CNN’s “360 With Anderson Cooper,” 9/1/08)