And without a massive charge to the taxpayers or media hoopla about a messianic speech in Berlin:
Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin will meet with foreign leaders next week at the United Nations, a move to boost her foreign-policy credentials, a Republican strategist said.
Republican candidate John McCain plans to introduce the Alaska governor to heads of state at the opening of the U.N. General Assembly, although specific names weren’t yet firmed up. “The meetings will give her some exposure and experience with foreign leaders,” the strategist said. “It’s a great idea.”
McCain and Palin are expected to visit the U.N. on Tuesday, when President George W. Bush will address the international body.
Since her nomination, Palin has energized the Republican base, drawn huge crowds and propelled fund-raising. However, Democrats have attacked her as weak on foreign policy experience. Even on last week’s “Saturday Night Live,” actress Tina Fey spoofed Palin’s assertion that she is familiar with issues involving Russia, noting that Alaska is nearby. “I can see Russia from my house!” Fey-as-Palin said.
But McCain advisers hope her U.N. visit will show how quickly Palin can make key connections and become well-versed in foreign-policy issues.
In my view, meeting foreign leaders is over-rated – once upon a time, a US President simply wouldn’t leave the United States during his term; diplomacy was handled by diplomats. Treaties were worked out in consultation between diplomats and the President and once agreed to they were submitted to the Senate for ratification. It all worked pretty well – and as varied meetings, at varied times, between Woodrow Wilson, David Lloyd George, Georges Clemenceau, Winston Churchill, Adolf Hilter, Josef Stalin, Chiang Kai-shek, Neville Chamberlain, Benito Mussolini, Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Harry Truman produced pretty much nothing but disaster, I can assert with some strength that direct meetings between leaders cause more problems than they solve. In counter balance to this, we have the meetings between Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev….but the chances that the level of wisdom in those two men would be duplicated elsewhere by others is rather slim, even with the best of intentions.
But Governor Palin will meet some – and it will at least give her a grounding in the sort people she’ll have to deal with in global affairs. It will also give her at least as much foreign policy experience as Obama, who has nothing but the aforementioned trip to Europe a couple months ago on his foreign policy resume’.
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