Palin’s world-leader tour

Grading Palin’s crash course in diplomacy

Sarah Palin met with the leaders of Afghanistan and Colombia, and with Henry Kissinger, said Pat Murphy in the Idaho Mountain Express, all of whom agreed to be party to a “cheap campaign stunt” designed to turn Palin into “an overnight ‘expert’ on foreign affairs.” If these silly “staged visits weren’t such an embarrassment,” they would be as fun to watch as a Saturday Night Live skit.

Palin gets her first visit with heads of state? said the Worthington, Minn., Daily Globe in an editorial. “Good for her, we say.” But the secretive nature of her meetings—“with the exclusion of the media”—is troubling. Palin has been “essentially hidden from the press” for weeks.

At least Palin agreed to meet with Colombian President Alvaro Uribe, said Investor’s Business Daily in an editorial. Most Democrats, worried about offending “Big Labor” over a proposed free trade pact, “snubbed” the biggest U.S. ally in Latin America. Palin showed foreign policy chops by putting “American interests over Washington politics.”