Trade missions are not foreign policy experience. That's business experience. Or am I missing something?

Trade missions would be a form of foreign policy. Economic issues are a major component of international relations. The problem with Palin, however, is how limited her contact with foreign officials has been. I believe she met with a low level Russian politician once and that was the extent of her contact with Russia. There is this an international group called "The Northern Forum" of which Alaska is a member of. This group consists of sub-national governments that inhabit "northern areas." The group consists of regional governments from the PRC, the RF, Japan and a few other nations. Under Palin's governorship, she has cut the budget to this group and stopped sending representatives. As I said earlier, she has some experience but not a lot of it.

Pelosi is sort of the democrat version of Palin. I really hope McCain doesn't die. Neither one knows what they are talking about.

True... but the arguement is she has no expierence.  WHich isn't really the case.

I am not a supporter of McCain/Palin, but it is incorrect to say she has no experience. It is also incorrect to say she has much experience. I think limited experience would be the appropriate term.

Yep.  That's about the right way to put it.  That and the "Being near Russia" comment in general wasn't stupid... as usually you get a LOT of foreign policy expierence from it.  Though not so much in the Palin govonership as she set her platform on fixing the local issues first.

You have just pointed out precisely why the statement is stupid. The point is that being near Russia doesn't automatically imply having experience in foreign policy.

If I worked as a cleaner at a baby care center, it'd be misleading of me to say "I have experience taking care of babies because I work at a baby care center". Same kind of statement, same stupidity. You wouldn't want me around your baby, would you?

No but if you were the manager of the Baby care place i'd assume you know something about babys.

Unless you later found out that I had only interacted with a baby once in my life (the same way that Sarah Palin only seems to have interacted once with a Russian politician, and apparently in a quite unimportant context).

That's the thing though.  So she's only interacted with one Russian baby.  It seems like she has had interaction with other "babys" as well.

The Russia statement wasn't just an indication of a relationship with russia... but a statement in general about how states who live on the boarder deal with a lot of foreign governments.

Hence why at least one quote she talks about it says "Russia and other countries near our borders."

Russia is just the best example when citing one country because it's the closest, next to Canada and in a lot of voters minds Canada doesn't matter.

I didn't see you jump on Obama back when he said his lack of foreign policy expiernce didn't matter because his dad was from Kenya. ( A worse claim then the russian one.)