MAT-SU — While all the scrutiny Gov. Sarah Palin and her family have been experiencing this past week may seem very intense and sometimes unfair, that may be because, as Alaskans, we already know her.

The rest of the world is just meeting Palin.

“She’s had an amazingly quick rise through the political field,” said Don Crowley, University of Idaho professor and chair of the school’s Political Science Department. “Anyone who goes through that is subject to scrutiny.” Palin did her undergraduate work at the University of Idaho and while Crowley taught back then, he has no recollection of her being there. According to his records, she wasn’t in any of his classes.

Gerald McBeath, University of Alaska Fairbanks professor and chair of the Political Science Department, readily compared Palin’s intense analysis with Dan Quayle in 1988 and Geraldine Ferraro in 1984.

“This kind of scrutiny reflects that she is an unknown to a national audience,” McBeath said. “There’s also more scrutiny because it’s 2008 and we’re more of a media intense society.”

James Muller, University of Alaska Anchorage professor of political science, also compared the intense level of inspection to Thomas Eagleton, the vice presidential nominee of George McGovern in 1972. After details of psychiatric therapy were released, he was forced to withdraw from the race.

“This is probably not unique,” Muller said. “Pretty much every vice presidential nominee has been closely scrutinized, especially those who haven’t previously been thoroughly exposed to national media attention before.”

There’s also the factor of time. The pundits and public were only given five days from the announcement of her as the pick until she formally accepted the nomination.

“Usually there is a few days of a grace period,” said Henry Brady, University of California Berkeley professor of political science and public policy. “Sarah Palin did not get a few days’ grace. The media just go crazy and want to know.”

While she’s formally being looked at as a vice presidential candidate by examiners, some people are also scrutinizing her for the presidency.

“She is nominated to be vice president to a candidate who is 72 years old,” Crowley said. “It’s not unusual for people to want to know more about a person who might conceivably become president.”

The issues that have been raised range from her foreign policy experience to her teenage daughter’s pregnancy, which may not have been pinpointed if it hadn’t been hidden when she was announced, Brady said.

“There seemed to be an effort to cover it up by her holding [Palin’s] baby,” he said. “That trickery is the kind of thing that drives reporters crazy and helped add to the feeding frenzy you’re seeing.”

While many people think the Palin children’s personal lives should be left alone and aren’t relevant to the campaign, she does talk about her children as a way of introducing herself, which opens the door for media to ask questions about them, said Matt Barreto, University of Washington assistant professor of political science.

“From a sort of political science perspective, we would hope that most of the questions would be related to a person’s job qualifications and nothing more than that,” Barreto said.

But, her qualifications may be the biggest issue. Being mayor of a small town is not the same thing as going to Washington, D.C., and being involved in national politics, Crowley said.

However, Muller emphasized that Palin has more executive experience than Sens. John McCain, Barack Obama and Joe Biden.

“It’s different being a legislature than an executive,” he said. “For a president, executive experience is a good standard.”