The Obama campaign, within minutes of McCain’s announcement of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin as his running mate, issued a statement that said, “Today, John McCain put the former mayor of a town of 9000 with zero foreign policy experience a heartbeat away from the presidency.” The most notable thing about this statement was that they completely ignored Palin’s experience as governor of Alaska. They called her instead, “the former mayor of a town of 9000.”

Palin and other Republicans responded in kind during last night’s Republican convention. Ignoring Obama’s recent experience, they referred to Obama most often as a former community organizer. Comparing her experience as mayor to Obama’s experience, Palin said, “Being a mayor is kind of like being a community organizer, except a mayor has actual responsibilities.”

To those who belittle small towns like the one where she was mayor, Palin said that people in small towns “are the ones who do some of the hardest work in America … who grow our food, run our factories, and fight our wars.”

But Palin also highlighted her experience and accomplishments as Governor of Alaska. Among other things, she established ethics reforms, vetoed “nearly half a billion dollars” in “wasteful spending,” and “fought to bring about the largest private-sector infrastructure project in North American history”: “a nearly forty billion dollar natural gas pipeline to help lead America to energy independence.”

In contrast to her accomplishments, she said of Sen. Obama, “this is a man who has authored two memoirs but not a single major law or reform – not even in the state senate.” Earlier in the evening, Rudy Giuliani went even further in criticizing Obama’s tenure in the state senate:

Then he ran for — then he ran for the state legislature and he got elected. And nearly 130 times, he couldn’t make a decision. He couldn’t figure out whether to vote “yes” or “no.” It was too tough. He voted — he voted “present.”

I didn’t know about this vote “present” when I was mayor of New York City. Sarah Palin didn’t have this vote “present” when she was mayor or governor. You don’t get “present.” It doesn’t work in an executive job. For president of the United States, it’s not good enough to be present. You have to make a decision.

There were several other noteworthy sound bites from Palin’s speech. Here are a few:

• “And I’ve learned quickly, these past few days, that if you’re not a member in good standing of the Washington elite, then some in the media consider a candidate unqualified for that reason alone. But here’s a little news flash for all those reporters and commentators: I’m not going to Washington to seek their good opinion – I’m going to Washington to serve the people of this country.”
• “While I was at it, I got rid of a few things in the governor’s office that I didn’t believe our citizens should have to pay for. That luxury jet was over the top. I put it on eBay.”
• “In politics, there are some candidates who use change to promote their careers. And then there are those, like John McCain, who use their careers to promote change. They’re the ones whose names appear on laws and landmark reforms, not just on buttons and banners, or on self-designed presidential seals.”
• “And though both Senator Obama and Senator Biden have been going on lately about how they are always, quote, ‘fighting for you,’ let us face the matter squarely. There is only one man in this election who has ever really fought for you … in places where winning means survival and defeat means death … and that man is John McCain.”