UPDATED: McCain-Palin demonstrate foreign policy 101: Pay attention to your allies!

To get off the US financial story for a mental break…. Investor’s Business Daily has an excellent editorial, contrasting the foreign policy basics between the candidate teams seeking the leader of the free world digs.

Central to the story? The little heralded round of meetings with foreign allies here, for the UN General Assembly. McCain introduced Gov. Palin to leaders from Colombia, Afghanistan, Georgia, Iraq, Pakistan and India.

Where was the US press? Whining about “access”… complaining that briefs of the discussions were somehow less newsworthy because they were not afforded a “seat at the table”.

Instead, outlets from AP to Newsday to even Fox News busied themselves hollering about access. They made themselves the story. Then they conjectured that these were “tutorials” and “burnishings of resumes” instead of messages to the world.

Obsessed with pink sofas and Alaska-shaped earrings, and on lookout for a mispronounced word, they complained that they got only a briefing, not a seat at the table. In the end, their braying only underlined their lack of interest in foreign affairs.

How do we know this? Because there really was news out there about what was discussed in Palin’s meetings, like the one she had with Uribe. Details were reported in Colombian newspapers like El Tiempo, agencies like EFE and other Spanish-language press, where interest in what a President McCain means for a nation like Colombia is very real. Any American who wanted to know that was out of luck unless he could read Spanish.

In an environment where both America’s friends and enemies converged on US soil for the UN meeting, the subtle, but unequivocally stated, support demonstrated by McCain and Palin’s meeting with America’s friends sent a message to the tryants around the world. A McCain administration would focus their prime attentions, meetings and aid to our allies first and foremost.

Not those nations with the most money, prestige or radical think tanks lobbying Congress on their behalf. Just friends.

What’s more, by visiting with leaders of Colombia, Afghanistan, Georgia, Iraq, Pakistan and India, Palin and McCain showed that premium attention will be paid to the friends undergoing the biggest tests and trying hardest to embrace markets.

The op-ed also drew some pointed contrasts between the basic philosophy of McCain/Palin foreign policy and Obama/Biden’s. And many of these points speak directly to the Obama camp argument that Palin has no foreign policy experience – passing these meetings off as a mere a photo op to bolster her resume.

Palin is denounced as “inexperienced” by these media, but she’s no rube in grasping an emerging new world with implications for U.S. policy. In fact, she is looking at the picture with fresh, non-Beltway eyes.

Countries like Colombia will grow more relevant as its economy expands, its internal war is won and the threat builds from Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez, armed to the teeth with big new weapons.

Obama has never set foot in Latin America. He has yet to sit down with any Latin American leader in person, though he’s made the offer to Venezuela’s Chavez and Cuba’s Castro brothers.

His running mate, Joe Biden, reaps hay for his foreign policy experience but has only managed to set foot in two Latin American countries during his 35 years on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

Visits and meetings? That’s not enough, the Obama faithful will say. Okay… let’s talk negotiations then.

Obama has yet to negotiate with a foreign government.

Palin did so with Canada, our top energy supplier and largest trading partner, to create a 1,700-mile natural gas pipeline.

Obama, in fact, discounted Canada’s importance in a campaign vow to break the 1994 trade ties forged in the North American Free Trade Agreement.

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That’s the real shame of it all. Palin’s visit with Colombia’s Uribe, our battered ally surrounded by a hostile Marxist state, sends a major message to the entire region about McCain’s commitment to our loyal new friends.

Obama, meantime, imagines that hate-filled, obscenity-spewing Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez will turn docile if he sits down to tea with him without preconditions. Even with that offer on the table to Chavez, he didn’t bother meeting with Uribe. Don’t think that a tyrant like Chavez didn’t notice.

Contrast this hand of friendship and respect extended by the GOP ticket with the embarrassing behavior of the DNC. It was only days ago that I posted the Democrats were busy dodging Uribe. And Obama? Just a phone call for the Colombia President… Perhaps McCain should send Uribe a souvenir… “I came to see Obama, and all I got was this lousy tee shirt”…

Another US ally, snubbed by Obama? Australia.

Meanwhile, as Palin assured our Colombian and Afghan allies, McCain threw attention to another media-ignored friend, Australia. The Australian on Tuesday published a 1,298-word essay by McCain on what Australia means to him and what his U.S. foreign policy means for them. The newspaper noted that Obama had also been asked to submit a piece but hadn’t bothered.

As the self-absorbed US media kicked out fluff pieces… like CNN’s Peter Hamby and Wes Little’s 268 word ditty on Pakistan’s new Prez, Asif Ali Zardari, calling Palin gorgeous… foreign news outlets were paying attention to the US candidates and their reception.

And, as IBD rightly points out, the US media comes out the losers.

The press spent so much time sniping at Sarah Palin for her visits with global leaders that in the end it babbled about itself. What it missed was news on John McCain’s foreign policy. Who are the real rubes?

One of the few comments INRE the Financial Rescue Plan from Palin comes from a Katie Couric interview… where Ms. Couric removes one foot from her mouth, only to promptly insert the other.

Interviewing John McCain on Wednesday’s CBS Evening News, Katie Couric informed him and viewers that, during an interview of Sarah Palin she conducted earlier in the day, Palin warned of a “Great Depression” if the bail out is not passed, leading Couric to scold Palin to McCain: “But isn’t so much of this, Senator McCain, about consumer confidence and using rhetoric like the ‘Great Depression,’ is that the kind of language Americans need to hear right now?” Quite a bit of chutzpah for Couric, chutzpah CBS didn’t even hide from viewers since in the subsequent excerpts from the Palin interview which viewers saw it was Couric herself who raised the ominous phrase.

Palin had not used the term when Couric asked Palin: “If this doesn’t pass, do you think there’s a risk of another Great Depression?” Palin’s reaction, in full:

Unfortunately, that is the road that America may find itself on. Not necessarily this, as it’s been proposed, has to pass or we’re going to find ourselves in another Great Depression. But, there has got to be action taken, bipartisan effort, Congress not pointing fingers at this point at one another, but finding the solution to this, taking action, and being serious about the reforms on Wall Street that are needed.

Also caught using the evil “D” word? NBC’s Tom Brokaw