Palin sits down with foreign leaders
By Michael Cooper and Kate Zernike Published: September 24, 2008

NEW YORK: Governor Sarah Palin of Alaska met her first foreign heads of state as she crisscrossed New York City receiving foreign policy tutorials in advance of her vice presidential debate next week with Senator Joseph Biden Jr., the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

Palin - who scheduled a series of meetings Tuesday with world leaders who were in town for the UN General Assembly - sat down first with President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan, who told her of the need for more troops in his country and bonded with her over his baby son. Then she was whisked up to the Colombian Mission to talk free trade and renewable energy with President Álvaro Uribe of Colombia.

She capped off her day meeting with the éminence grise of Republican foreign policy, former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, who spoke with her about Georgia, Russia and NATO.

It was Palin's introduction to motorcade diplomacy, a lightning round of meetings and photo opportunities designed to produce pictures to portray Palin - who lacks much in the way of foreign policy experience, has traveled abroad little and had never met a foreign head of state before Tuesday - at ease with world leaders.

Democrats, and some Republicans, have tried to make Palin's lack of foreign policy experience an issue in the campaign.

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Senator John McCain's campaign officials have made three points so far when asked about Palin's foreign policy credentials.

They invoke geography, noting Alaska's proximity to Russia, as Palin did when she told ABC News that "you can actually see Russia from land here in Alaska." Other times, they cite her résumé, noting that as governor she has been commander of the Alaska National Guard for nearly two years. And they often pivot to her work on energy policy, as McCain did last week, when he said, "I'm proud of her obvious knowledge of this nation's energy needs, because that's a national security issue."

But with the debate looming next week, the McCain-Palin campaign has put her on an accelerated course in foreign policy and scheduled a series of meetings with world leaders and foreign policy mandarins.

Palin's morning began with a two-hour briefing at her hotel from the director of national intelligence, Mike McConnell. The briefings are offered as a courtesy to the presidential and vice presidential candidates, and the campaign said that she was the last of the four candidates to receive one this year. Then it was off to the first of what was scheduled to be two days of meetings.

The point of the meetings was not so much to cram Palin full of information, according to a McCain campaign adviser who has worked with Palin, but to introduce her to people like Kissinger so that she will feel comfortable calling on them for advice and counsel as the campaign continues.

Palin was accompanied on her rounds by Randy Scheunemann, a senior foreign policy adviser to the McCain campaign, and Steve Biegun, a former staff member of President George W. Bush's National Security Council.

"Her primary purpose was to develop a relationship and to listen," said Biegun, who quickly added, "I think she's already fully prepared to be vice president."

Visits between U.S. officials and foreign heads of state are often perfunctory, formal affairs, and reporters are rarely let in for more than a brief photo opportunity. But the McCain-Palin campaign sparked a brief media rebellion when it initially insisted that only camera crews could cover the first few seconds of each meeting. That proviso was reversed under pressure after the press corps threatened to boycott the events unless at least one reporter was also allowed in for those opening seconds and could then share the information with other reporters.

Palin has been carefully shielded from the media since she was added to the Republican ticket nearly a month ago, granting only a handful of interviews, holding no news conferences yet and exchanging only a few words with reporters on the campaign trail.