737,000 - population of Alaska[/qtuoe]
It was 675 thousand and change when she was elected.
307,000 - population of Galveston, Texas.
:think:
I don't know where you went to school, but I would bet a graduate from The Center for Geographic Analysis Harvard University would have come up with a better comparison to Alaska's population :chuckle:
Chalk that up to a faulty memory on the point. I've addressed this before and for some reason I thought it was Galveston that I'd used as a comparison. It was actually Austin, Texas. Had Galveston on my mind...Galveston, oh Galveston.
Now, back to the point, which is that the entire state has a population smaller than a number of American cities. When Palin was elected a not inconsiderable number of cities would rank above Alaska in population.
New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Houston, Philly, Phoenix, San Antonio, San Diego, Dallas, San Jose, Austin, Jacksonville, Indianapolis, San Francisco, Columbus, Charlotte, El Paso, Seattle and Denver, Memphis are within spitting distance.
So while being a governor is an accomplishment, it's on the order of being mayor of El Paso (679k as of 2014). That's not nothing, but how many mayors of El Paso can you think of off the top of your head?
On Ivy League work. Getting in is the hard part. The rest is just volume. It's less impressive than grad school and more than a typical state experience.