Sarah's Big Day at the United Nations

Sarah Palin has never met with a single foreign leader, until today. The McCain campaign is trotting her off to the United Nations for a crash course in foreign diplomacy. As the General Assembly convenes, Palin will use the opportunity to bolster her non-existent foreign policy credentials.

Today, Palin is scheduled to meet with Afghanistan's President Hamid Karzai and Colombian President Alvaro Uribe. Tomorrow, she will get a foreign policy tutorial from Henry Kissinger before joining McCain and they will speed-date their way through meetings with Iraq's President Jalal Talabani; Pakistan's new president, Asif Ali Zardari; Georgia President Mikheil Saakashvili; Ukrainian President Victor Yushchenko; and ndia's Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.

Besides glad-handing with foreign leaders for photo ops, Palin will not hold a single news conference or speech. The McCain campaign banned reporters from her first meetings with world leaders, allowing access only to photographers and a television crew. CNN, which was providing the television coverage for news organizations, pulled its TV crew, effectively denying Palin the high visibility she had sought.

Hopefully voters will see Palin's field trip to the UN for what it is: a political ploy that is completely without substance.