On her other foreign policy fronts, check out the state of Alaska’s
annual trade report. Turns out that Palin had met a head of state before her whirlwind UN tour last week: on page 24 there is a photo of the governor with the president of Iceland (must have forgot about that one during the Charlie Gibson interview). Maybe it was
pushing the constitutional envelope, but
she signed an “intergovernmental accord” with the Canadian province of Yukon in 2008. Also check out this
photo of Governor Palin surrounded by a gaggle of diplomats at the ”Alaska Fur and Ice 2008.” (Piper was there, too!) Perhaps Palin was behind the sister city arrangement between Wasilla and Mirniy, Russia?
As Julian
has described, governors do have foreign policies these days, and I think that would extend to pretty much all of them. But obviously the experience level is going to vary with the size of the state and the length of the tenure. Palin’s is slight on both counts, although Alaska’s foreign involvements are likely to be greater than, say, Wyoming’s, by virtue of its geographic placement (not that seeing Russia or airspace have anything to do with it). As governor of Minnesota, for instance, also-ran Tim Pawlenty had led some sizable trade missions to India and China. If a governor of California were in the mix for a national ticket, no one would have
any cause to question the candidate’s international experience, even if it didn’t involve any nukes. As along other dimensions, it’s too bad that Palin is giving a bad name to the good (or at least necessary) thing of gubernatorial foreign policy.
