A comparison - Hillary Clinton's and Barack Obama's experience

INSTEAD OF COMPARING Hillary Clinton's and Barack Obama's experience -- a vague set of claims -- I turned my attention toward accomplishments. Not what they've accomplished for themselves, but what they've accomplished for others.

In doing so, I excluded purely personal gains. I also eliminated all distinctions or honors. For similar reasons, I ignored the elections they've won. These credentials are well-known.

Also, like any alert prospective employer, I am informed by what they support, worked on, worked toward and fought for, but I am more interested in what they have accomplished for their constituents.

After graduating from Columbia, Obama went to work with churches that organized job training and other programs for residents of a massive housing project in Chicago. He persuaded the city to provide summer jobs, remove asbestos, repair toilets, pipes and ceilings. He went door to door, offering help for three years, then went to Harvard Law School.

Upon graduating from Wellesley, Hillary Rodham made a commencement speech that moved her audience. She went immediately to Yale Law School.

Obama returned to Chicago to lead Project Vote, which signed up about 150,000 new African-American voters. He also joined a big law firm.

Following Yale, and a year in Washington, Rodham moved to Arkansas and married Bill Clinton. She taught at the University of Arkansas and joined a big law firm.

Clinton established a legal aid clinic at the university, where she taught for two years. Obama began teaching at the University of Chicago, where he would continue to lecture for 11 years. I mention teaching because I consider it an accomplishment in the service of others.

During her time as an attorney in Arkansas, Clinton gave birth to Chelsea. Her husband ran unsuccessfully for Congress, successfully for attorney general, and governor. During Obama's time as an attorney in Chicago, he became a husband and father of two daughters. He entered the Illinois Senate in 1994.

As a member of the minority party of the Senate for six of his eight years there, Obama wrote a health insurance law that covered an additional 20,000 children, a welfare reform law, an earned-income-tax-credit law for working-poor families, and death penalty reform that passed unanimously. During his last two years in the majority, he sponsored 780 bills, 280 of which became law.

As first lady of Arkansas, and of the United States, Clinton served on many boards. She chaired only one: the Task Force on National Health Care Reform, which failed, accomplishing only political traction for Republicans and a setback for her husband.

She fended off prosecution involving the White House Travel Office and her investments with Whitewater. Although these are personal accomplishments, they also served constituents by protecting her husband.

A year after Clinton became a senator, she secured $20 billion for New York City in the wake of 9/11. Among other funding measures she directed toward her state, she prevented the closing of a military base there. Although she is considered to be one of the most influential Democrats in the Senate, most of her sponsored legislation has been symbolic -- naming two post offices, two courthouses, honoring and congratulating sports teams and historic figures from New York.

Since Obama entered the U.S. Senate in 2004, he has joined Republican Richard Lugar in writing a law that funds the destruction or securing of loose nuclear and conventional weapons (shoulder-fired anti-aircraft missiles, for example) throughout the world. He also introduced the first bill, that soon became law, to fund and address pandemic flu preparedness.

In one inspiring discovery, Obama and Clinton teamed up to pass a law that helps hospitals disclose medical errors. It goes a long way toward serving patients while reducing malpractice claims.

There is no way to assess the value of each candidate's participation in collective efforts to serve our country. Clinton has given time to many efforts and lived approximately 5,000 more days than Obama, amassing supporters, money and fame. But time spent achieving such goals can hardly be seen as accomplishments for the good of the people.

Obama's accomplishments show greater efficiency and clarity of purpose, forming productive alliances, making the most of his comparatively short career.

People talk about his charisma, but give me that skill and focus, trained on a four-year term, and we could see unprecedented results.

credit to Paul B. Hertneky is a freelance writer who teaches at Antioch University New England in Keene.