CQ HOMELAND SECURITY
Sept. 26, 2008 – 8:04 p.m.
Palin Punching Over Her Weight on Foreign Policy
By Jeff Stein, CQ Staff
It’s clear now, as if we needed more proof, that Sarah Palin doesn’t have a clue about the world beyond the Bering Strait. Or if she does, she can’t express it.
But does it matter?
After all, her supporters say, Dan Quayle didn’t have a clue, either, when Vice President George Bush picked him as his running mate in 1988 (for much the same reasons that John McCain chose Palin). And, according to some noteworthy accounts, the onetime Indiana senator played — and played well — an important role for Bush in some crucial foreign policy tests, notwithstanding his penchant for world-class gaffes.
But Bush, the head of the ticket, had earned an impressive national security resume — ambassador to China, CIA director, and two terms as vice president. And at 64 he was relatively young and in very good shape compared with John McCain , 72, a survivor of cancer and a POW camp — and whose temperament has often been questioned.
So there’s no small chance that the hockey-mom governor will move into the Oval Office at some point, should she and McCain be elected.
And by the lights of her stumbling, rambling, nervous appearance on CBS Thursday night, she is punching way over her weight.
When she said, “our next-door neighbors are foreign countries, there in the state that I am the executive of,” all I could think of was that hapless Miss Teen contestant in South Carolina, whose smiley confusion over a simple question about teaching geography turned into an instant You Tube classic.
Less well known is that the young beauty queen got another crack at the question on the Today Show and did a pretty good job — for a teenager.
Palin is not a teenager. But is she teachable?
Possibly, although one can’t be optimistic The way she described her meeting with Henry Kissinger is instructive. When Katie Couric asked Palin if she favored direct negotiations with Iran, as Kissinger did, she seemed to say no. But her answer was so convoluted, it was hard to tell.
“I think, with [Iranian President Mahmoud] Ahmadinejad, personally, he is not one to negotiate with,” Palin said. “You can’t just sit down with him with no preconditions being met. Barack Obama is so off-base in his proclamation that he would meet with some of these leaders around our world who would seek to destroy America and that, and without preconditions being met. That’s beyond na??ve. And it’s beyond bad judgment.”
Couric: “Are you saying Henry Kissinger — “
Palin: “ — It’s dangerous.”
Palin Punching Over Her Weight on Foreign Policy
Couric: “— is na??ve for supporting that?”
Palin: “I’ve never heard Henry Kissinger say, ‘Yeah, I’ll meet with these leaders without preconditions being met.’ Diplomacy is about doing a lot of background work first and shoring up allies and positions and figuring out what sanctions perhaps could be implemented if things weren’t going to go right. That’s part of diplomacy.”
Well then, she’s not listening very closely. And she’s confused over the difference between conditions and preparations.
They are not the same.
In an interview with Bloomberg TV last March, Kissinger was asked whether the United States should negotiate directly with Iran and said, “Yes, I think we should.”
And at a widely quoted forum with four other former U.S. secretaries of state the other day, he said it again.
“I do not believe that we can make conditions for the opening of negotiations. We ought, however, to be very clear about the content of negotiations and work it out with other countries and with our own government.”
In fact, “no preconditions” was the hallmark of Kissinger’s negotiating style, employed most famously in the secret diplomacy that led to the normalization of relations with China, as his recently released, once top secret memos on his negotiations with China reveal.
But that is not the same as “preparations,” or as Palin put it, “background work.”
In Kissinger’s world — which is the real world, in fact — heads of state do not meet before plenty of meetings have taken place at lower levels. In the case of China, as well as North Vietnam and the Middle East, that chore fell to Kissinger. In other cases, such as with Libya recently, a CIA operative played a key role.
At the forum at George Washington University last week, Kissinger advocated the same approach with Iran.
“I always believed that the best way to begin a negotiation is to tell the other side exactly what you have in mind and what you are — what the outcome is that you’re trying to achieve, so that they have something that they can react to.”
It doesn’t mean you’ll get what you want — see Korea, North — but it’s the only channel to resolve disputes outside of war.
Palin Punching Over Her Weight on Foreign Policy
And guess what? It is hard, tremendously complicated, highly nuanced work.
And it can’t all be staffed out. At some point, the president has to know what he — or she — is doing.
Compare, if you will, Palin’s flustered, nearly incomprehensible responses to Couric with Richard Nixon’s opening gambit with Chinese premier Chou en-Lai at their first, behind-closed-doors meeting in Beijing in February 1972.
“I know that the prime minister will want to discuss, and we will want to discuss with him, not only Taiwan but the problems of southeast Asia, Korea, South Asia, and then related problems in the Pacific area — the problem of our relations with Japan and then world problems generally, the relations with the great superpowers.
“While our emphasis will necessarily be on the bilateral matters, in order to discuss these matters in an intelligent and effective way, we must do so in the framework of the whole world because — as I said earlier — while neither of our countries wants to rule the whole world, each of us by destiny is a world power, and we therefore must discuss issues of the whole world, not just the issues which are a problem at the moment.
“For example, we cannot discuss a critical area like south Asia, and India, without evaluating the policy of the Soviet Union toward that area. And the same can be said of the whole problem of arms control.”
Can you imagine Sarah Palin tossing off such a monologue with any foreign leader, much less Iran’s?
In recent days, conservatives have been circulating an e-mail equating Palin’s meager executive experience with that of Theodore Roosevelt, who had been governor of New York for only two years when William McKinley picked him as his running mate in 1900.
Like Palin, the colorful, outspoken patrician was ridiculed by his opponents.
But there the comparison ends. Roosevelt, who traveled widely, had a passionate, omnivorous intellect.
He wrote 35 books on subjects ranging from wildlife to the history of the American West. He had been a combat unit commander — the famous Rough Riders — in Cuba, and an assistant secretary of the Navy.
Equating him to Palin is obscene. But if a comparison be made, it is this: Roosevelt knew what he was talking about.
Palin is a babe in the woods. And the wolves are ready.
Palin Punching Over Her Weight on Foreign Policy
Jeff Stein can be reached at jstein@cq.com.
Comments
very nicely put and factual without being condescending. what mccain is doing to her beyond inhuman and she is trying to bluff her way through but the problem is that other people know far too much to be faked out.Palin is a Fake It Til You Make it VP pick and too bad for her she won't make it - NOT THIS TIME.
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