You may want to look beyond the numbers on Obama in the Illinois senate.

When asked about his legislative record, Obama rattles off several bills he sponsored as an Illinois lawmaker.

He expanded children's health insurance; made the state Earned Income Tax Credit refundable for low-income families; required public bodies to tape closed-door meetings to make government more transparent; and required police to videotape interrogations of homicide suspects.

And the list goes on.

It's a lengthy record filled with core liberal issues. But what's interesting, and almost never discussed, is that he built his entire legislative record in Illinois in a single year.

Republicans controlled the Illinois General Assembly for six years of Obama's seven-year tenure. Each session, Obama backed legislation that went nowhere; bill after bill died in committee. During those six years, Obama, too, would have had difficulty naming any legislative ­achievements.

Then, in 2002, dissatisfaction with President Bush and Republicans on the national and local levels led to a Democratic sweep of nearly every lever of Illinois state government. For the first time in 26 years, Illinois Democrats controlled the governor's office as well as both legislative chambers.

The white, race-baiting, hard-right Republican Illinois Senate Majority Leader James "Pate" Philip was replaced by Emil Jones Jr., a gravel-voiced, dark-skinned African-American known for chain-smoking cigarettes on the Senate floor.

Jones had served in the Illinois Legislature for three decades. He represented a district on the Chicago South Side not far from Obama's. He became Obama's ­kingmaker.

Several months before Obama announced his U.S. Senate bid, Jones called his old friend Cliff Kelley, a former Chicago alderman who now hosts the city's most popular black call-in radio ­program.

I called Kelley last week and he recollected the private conversation as follows:

"He said, 'Cliff, I'm gonna make me a U.S. Senator.'"

"Oh, you are? Who might that be?"

"Barack Obama."

Jones appointed Obama sponsor of virtually every high-profile piece of legislation, angering many rank-and-file state legislators who had more seniority than Obama and had spent years championing the bills.

"I took all the beatings and insults and endured all the racist comments over the years from nasty Republican committee chairmen," State Senator Rickey Hendon, the original sponsor of landmark racial profiling and videotaped confession legislation yanked away by Jones and given to Obama, complained to me at the time. "Barack didn't have to endure any of it, yet, in the end, he got all the credit.

It is also instructive to look at the number of bills passed and their impact. Of course with both candidates being relatively new to the scene the long term wisdom of any legislative accomplishments will be hard to establish.

Further, if this is how you would judge experience, then

ARIZONA U.S. SENATOR JOHN MCCAIN
(26 YEARS TOTAL: Source Library of Congress)
*Four (4) years total elected service to the U.S. House of Representatives (1982 - 1986)
*Twenty-two (22) years total elected service to the U.S. Senate (1986 - 2008)

would seem to have both beat hollow.

If you think four more years of legislative experience (with the majority of that in the 'minors' at the state level) should persuade people to support Obama over Clinton, then surely twice that, eight more years of legislative experience (all at the national level), for John McCain over Obama and Clinton combined should persuade you to support John McCain. Or is that not as convenient for your position.

LEGISLATIVE EXPERIENCE
ILLINOIS U.S. SENATOR BARACK OBAMA
(11 YEARS TOTAL Source: Library of Congress)
*Eight (8) years total elected service to the Illinois Senate (1996 -2004)
*Three (3) years total elected service to the U.S. Senate (2005 -2008)

LEGISLATIVE EXPERIENCE
NEW YORK U.S. SENATOR HILLARY CLINTON
(7 YEARS TOTAL:Source Library of Congress)
*Seven (7) years total elected legislative service to the U.S Senate (2001 -2008)
*U.S. FIRST LADY DOES NOT COUNT as elected legislative service (1993 -2001)

ILLINOIS LEGISLATION RECORD
STATE SENATOR BARACK OBAMA
SPONSORED 823 BILLS in the ILLINOIS SENATE from 1996 to 2004(Source: New York Times)

BARACK OBAMA LEGISLATIVE RECORD IN U.S. SENATE:
*Since Jan 4, 2005 SENATOR BARACK OBAMA has SPONSORED 129 BILLS over and has CO-SPONSORED 545 BILLS (Source: Washington Post)

Aw who wants a commander-in-chief whose nose grows every time she opens her mouth.

Clinton, as far as I’m concerned, is qualified to be commander-in-chief. She’s been a senator for eight years; she’s a bright and creative thinker; she’s served on the Senate Armed Services Committee; and she’s seen various foreign policy failures and successes up close over the last 16 years. If she were president, she’d have my full confidence.

The issue being avoided here would seem to me to be her ability at identifying which was a success and which was a failure. As an example, her claims about Iraq as a failure render her judgment as very suspect to say the very least.

As it stands, neither one of the two Democrat contenders is ready for prime time, as one of the hired help in Obama's camp allowed, the other day.

Case in point, handling a foreign crisis call. As Obama's aide said, neither of them is ready to take the 3AM call. When polled 42% would want McCain to take the call, 25% Obama and 25% Clinton. Independents favored McCain 39% to 27% for Obama and 18% for Clinton.

The democrats better hope that the world is incredibly peaceful between now and November if they don't want voters to be reminded of who the grown up is in the race.