A recent commenter to my Comparing Alaska and New York City; Does size matter? post has taken issue with my extended comparison of infrastructure requirements between Illinois and Alaska, and how such requirements relate to experience in one who governs Alaska vs. in one who is a US senator for the state of Illinois.

Ansley stated,

…There’s not even 700,000 people in Alaska. The mayor of New York City has big fish to fry, my friend….each city has its own unique challenges, but the fact is, the more people you have in an area, the trickier things become.

My first reaction would be to wonder whether or not the critic has been to Alaska and seen, firsthand, how they deal with the logistics of managing such massive sea and air travel, in such extreme locations and weather conditions? Winter conditions that shut down most US airports are simply business as usual in Alaska. While working in Valdez, I was sent home only once, due to weather (and that was because the snowstorm had been dropping snow at the rate of 1 foot per hour for more about 4 hours). It’s not unusual for a typical Valdez snowstorm to drop 4 feet of snow. Once, when landing in Anchorage, the pilot informed us that the current temp was 0 degrees F. He also noted that the current ambient temp in Fairbanks, where the plane was headed, was -43 F. Did you catch that? It’s -43 F, yet they’re going to land and disembark because… it’s business as usual.

Simply put, you don’t manage that type of infrastructure, in that kind of weather, over that expanse of territory, unless you know exactly what you are doing.

But, to address the nonsensical population argument, let’s take a nonsensical look at it in terms of how it supposedly applies to the running of various countries, states, or cities. First, let’s use the following population values, from Wikipedia:

• US = 305,312,000
• China (PRC) = 1,321,851,888
• India = 1,132,446,000
• Russia = 142,008,838
• Canada = 33,390,000
• California = 36,553,215
• Illinois = 12,852,548
• NYC = 8,274,527
• Alaska = 677,000
• Illinois(2) = 642,627

Using the Deepak Chopra / Ansley argument, it appears that running the US is roughly 1/4 the job of running China or India (I’ll give you 4 US presidents for your 1 Chinese premier – and I’ll throw in an extra president for half a dozen Chinese gymnasts). Yet, we see that running the US is about 2 times the job of running Russia (that must explain why Putin has the time to go tiger hunting!), 9 times greater than running Canada (yet another reason for our friends up north to hate us), 8 times greater than California (so former / current actors shouldn’t have a problem running Cal-ee-for-nee-uh?), 24 times greater than Illinois, 37 times that of NYC, and a whopping 451 times more complex than running Alaska!

Case closed? End of story?

Not so fast, census breath.

Isn’t the point here to compare experience levels with regards to being in charge of – as in – managing and running something (i.e., executive experience)? While Palin is actually running Alaska, Senator (did you catch that? – “Senator”) Obama is not running Illinois. In fact, he is only one of two senators, along with around 18 congressmen. Surely we can’t take Illinois’ total population of 12.8 million when comparing Obama’s responsibilities with that of Palin’s, can we? So, let’s do an Obamadjustment to the population of Illinois. First off, since he’s one of two senators, we need to cut the 12.8 million in half, to 6.4 million. And, since he shares responsibility with all those congressmen, let’s half the 6.4 to 3.2 million. Finally, since Obama isn’t really running the state (that’s left for the… ahem, governor), let’s take only, say, 20% of the 3.2 million. Now we’re left with an adjusted population (Illinois(2)) of 642,627 that we could reasonably attribute to Obama’s non-executive responsibilities.

Well, using our adjusted number, we see that running the US is 475 times greater than Obama’s current non-executive role. That puts him behind the governor of Alaska, in terms of population comparisons.

The thing is, Obama isn’t running for VP.

In Obama and the Palin Effect, Deepak Chopra states,

Now, that was an interesting comparison, wasn’t it? Chopra is arguing that because the number of Alaska’s 683,478 residents is about one-tenth the number of New York City’s 8,274,527 residents, the task of governing Alaska must also be about one-tenth the job of governing NYC.

But let’s take a look at this graphically. Below is a bar-chart histogram which compares both New York City (NYC) and Alaska (AK) with regards to their population levels.

Clearly, the population of NYC dwarfs that of AK.

However, what if we were to look at the size of NYC as compared to that of AK? The chart below illustrates this for us.

So, in terms of area (square miles), Alaska’s size (656,424 sq. mi.) so overwhelms that of New York City’s (469 sq. mi.), that NYC doesn’t even register on the chart. Simply put, Alaska is 1,400 times the size of New York City.

Using Chopra’s reasoning, this must mean that, in terms of area to govern, the job of running Alaska is expanded to the scale of running 1,400 New York Cities!

I wondered how these resource-based comparisons played out when comparing Obama’s state of Illinois to that of Palin’s Alaska. So I did a little bit of research. I found the results interesting.

Read the rest of this entry

John McCain, after congratulating Barack Obama for his historic nomination, appears to have chosen Alaska Governor Sarah Palin as his pick for VP. (see CNN, FoxNews)

Palin, the Barracuda.

CHANGE… we can believe in.

In an essentially 50/50 race, this is an awesome, gutsy, risky, and potentially brilliant move. Can we say… Maverick?

Kind of makes you wonder what Hillary is thinking now, doesn’t it?

(image: McNamee/Getty)