NEW YORK - Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin, who has not held a press conference in nearly four weeks of campaigning, initially barred reporters from her first meetings with world leaders Tuesday, but reversed course after they protested.
At first, campaign aides told the TV producer, print and news agency reporters in the press pool that followed the Alaska governor that they would not be admitted along with still photographers and a video camera crew taken in to photograph her meetings with Afghan President Hamid Karzai and Colombian President Alvaro Uribe, who are here for the United Nations General Assembly this week. She also was to meet later with former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger.
These sessions and meetings scheduled for Wednesday are part of the Republican campaign's effort to give Palin experience in foreign affairs. She has never met a foreign head of state and first traveled outside North America just last year.
At least two news organizations, including The Associated Press, objected to the exclusion of reporters and were told that the decision was not subject to discussion. Presidents and members of Congress routinely allow reporters to attend photo opportunities along with photographers and the reporters sometimes are able to ask questions during the brief photo sessions, usually held at the beginning of private meetings.
CNN, which was providing the television coverage for news organizations, decided to pull its TV crew from the first meeting, with Karzai, effectively denying Palin the high visibility she had sought. But after the campaign agreed to let CNN's producer in as well, the CNN camera crew joined the session.
According to the CNN producer who was let into Karzai's hotel suite with the photographers just before noon, Karzai was talking about his son. Palin was nodding, and asked what his name is. Karzai replied his name was Mirwais and explained that it means light of the house.
The media were escorted out after about 40 seconds.
Campaign aides subsequently announced that reporters would be allowed to accompany photographers into the later sessions with Uribe and Kissinger.
At that point, campaign spokeswoman Tracey Schmitt said it was all just a "miscommunication." Earlier, she had said, "The decision was made for this to be a photo spray with still cameras and video cameras only."
Palin has been criticized for avoiding taking questions from reporters or submitting to one-on-one interviews. She has had just two major interviews since Republican presidential candidate John McCain chose her as his running mate on Aug. 29.
On Wednesday, McCain and Palin were expected to meet jointly with Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili and Ukrainian President Viktor Yuschenko. Palin was then to meet separately with Iraqi President Jalal Talabani, Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari and Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.
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Comments: 66
And for all those people who firmly LOVE her...you dont know her how can you LOVE her?
The Producer should be fired.
At least this way the foreigners can get kissed while they're getting F-d.
Nick doesn't have his guitarist.
Sandy, I DISTINCTLY remember you commenting about using your yearly allotment of exclamation points already.
Imagine my surprise and confusion when I saw your comment FULL of !!!!!!!!! !
Now I'm scared, confused, surprised AND humiliated!
I don't think it's any more than that. Only real negotiations and/or talks between Palin and foreign heads of state should count as experience with foreign leadership.
She may get the chance to do just that.
Give me a break.
Be afraid of this woman. Be very afraid.
In W. Virginia, on Saturday, he accidentally went off script and wound up damn-near threatening his running mate! The SS guys have got to be stocking up on the Tums and aspirin for this fella.
Here's what Biden said, as he tried to act like a W. Virginia "homey"...and, I'm paraphrasing, but the actual quotes can be found. Do your own research:
"....if Obama tries to take my Beretta, we gonna have a problem....." He also said something about loving his shotgun, and this after he questioned the sanity of a 2007 YouTube debate question from a man who referred to his guns as his "babies".
LOL! The man is hilariously unhinged, and I have to wonder if he ever thinks before speaking.
Tell me, Jim G., does an utterly inexperienced President frighten you as much? Then why would you support Obama?
Would you like some tea with that?
Is this too difficult a concept for you to grasp? Because, I cannot simplify it any more than I just did.
I'm certain it's more than Palin, I'm just looking for a number.
Okay, I did quote the Senator...see, that's what those little quote-thingys are. I just said it was paraphrased, and if you wanted to get the whole story you could do a simple search.
On the second point, I asked a poster (Carla) to back her accusations. Certainly, if I said that Doyle was a senile old man with delusions of adequacy, someone would ask me for proof, don't you think?
And, for the record, I don't actually know Doyle, so I can't say how old he is.
That's not a insult, CA. Try again if you meant it to be. That's actually something to be proud of.
And, yes, Doyle and I are planning on taking the act on the road. We'll let you know when we're in your area, 'kay?
Thanks for clearing that up. quote = paraphrase. Gotcha.
"I really can't simplify enough for you, can I?"
Do you have any crayons? Oh, SNAP! Look who I asked THAT? To be fair, I think you need to understand it before you can explain it. My point was simple and to the point. I don't recall suggesting I failed to understand the mental gymnastics you engage in to adapt to the ever-changing, indefensible political positions you hold. The Federalist Party is on the rise, eh?
"Certainly, if I said that Doyle was a senile old man with delusions of adequacy, someone would ask me for proof, don't you think?"
Umm. Probably not. I would hope you could be a bit more creative, but I've been called worse and most people don't ask for justification. Now if you called me arrogant . . . I wouldn't argue, but couldn't guarantee others would refrain.
"And, for the record, I don't actually know Doyle, so I can't say how old he is. "
Oh. For THAT you consider the facts. ;P
And do you really think that there is a listing of how many heads of state that anyone in DC has met with? Come on.... Just admit that he has the experience in foreign affairs. You've been listening to too much Fox News and too much of Bill O'Reilly with all their lies and talking points.
Must be her clear diction and diplomacy.
CNN and some of the other networks decided to boycott any footage of Palin if an editor and reporter were not allowed in the room with the photographer and cameraman. The campaign wanted us to see Palin with heads of state but didn't want us to hear anything Palin had to say.
Perhaps she did us all a favor. Let's focus on McCain. How 'bout those health records Johnny-boy? And those financial records of yours were pretty sketchy at best. Looks like were in for another government shrouded in secrecy if McCain gets in.
Like POW records from Nam, eh?
AP
Bill Ayers.
The CAC was the brainchild of Bill Ayers, a founder of the Weather Underground in the 1960s. Among other feats, Mr. Ayers and his cohorts bombed the Pentagon, and he has never expressed regret for his actions. Barack Obama's first run for the Illinois State Senate was launched at a 1995 gathering at Mr. Ayers's home.
The Obama campaign has struggled to downplay that association. Last April, Sen. Obama dismissed Mr. Ayers as just "a guy who lives in my neighborhood," and "not somebody who I exchange ideas with on a regular basis." Yet documents in the CAC archives make clear that Mr. Ayers and Mr. Obama were partners in the CAC. Those archives are housed in the Richard J. Daley Library at the University of Illinois at Chicago and I've recently spent days looking through them.
The Chicago Annenberg Challenge was created ostensibly to improve Chicago's public schools. The funding came from a national education initiative by Ambassador Walter Annenberg. In early 1995, Mr. Obama was appointed the first chairman of the board, which handled fiscal matters. Mr. Ayers co-chaired the foundation's other key body, the "Collaborative," which shaped education policy.
The CAC's basic functioning has long been known, because its annual reports, evaluations and some board minutes were public. But the Daley archive contains additional board minutes, the Collaborative minutes, and documentation on the groups that CAC funded and rejected. The Daley archives show that Mr. Obama and Mr. Ayers worked as a team to advance the CAC agenda.
One unsettled question is how Mr. Obama, a former community organizer fresh out of law school, could vault to the top of a new foundation? In response to my questions, the Obama campaign issued a statement saying that Mr. Ayers had nothing to do with Obama's "recruitment" to the board. The statement says Deborah Leff and Patricia Albjerg Graham (presidents of other foundations) recruited him. Yet the archives show that, along with Ms. Leff and Ms. Graham, Mr. Ayers was one of a working group of five who assembled the initial board in 1994. Mr. Ayers founded CAC and was its guiding spirit. No one would have been appointed the CAC chairman without his approval.
The CAC's agenda flowed from Mr. Ayers's educational philosophy, which called for infusing students and their parents with a radical political commitment, and which downplayed achievement tests in favor of activism. In the mid-1960s, Mr. Ayers taught at a radical alternative school, and served as a community organizer in Cleveland's ghetto.
In works like "City Kids, City Teachers" and "Teaching the Personal and the Political," Mr. Ayers wrote that teachers should be community organizers dedicated to provoking resistance to American racism and oppression. His preferred alternative? "I'm a radical, Leftist, small 'c' communist," Mr. Ayers said in an interview in Ron Chepesiuk's, "Sixties Radicals," at about the same time Mr. Ayers was forming CAC.
CAC translated Mr. Ayers's radicalism into practice. Instead of funding schools directly, it required schools to affiliate with "external partners," which actually got the money. Proposals from groups focused on math/science achievement were turned down. Instead CAC disbursed money through various far-left community organizers, such as the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (or Acorn).
Mr. Obama once conducted "leadership training" seminars with Acorn, and Acorn members also served as volunteers in Mr. Obama's early campaigns. External partners like the South Shore African Village Collaborative and the Dual Language Exchange focused more on political consciousness, Afrocentricity and bilingualism than traditional education. CAC's in-house evaluators comprehensively studied the effects of its grants on the test scores of Chicago public-school students. They found no evidence of educational improvement.
CAC also funded programs designed to promote "leadership" among parents. Ostensibly this was to enable parents to advocate on behalf of their children's education. In practice, it meant funding Mr. Obama's alma mater, the Developing Communities Project, to recruit parents to its overall political agenda. CAC records show that board member Arnold Weber was concerned that parents "organized" by community groups might be viewed by school principals "as a political threat." Mr. Obama arranged meetings with the Collaborative to smooth out Mr. Weber's objections.
The Daley documents show that Mr. Ayers sat as an ex-officio member of the board Mr. Obama chaired through CAC's first year. He also served on the board's governance committee with Mr. Obama, and worked with him to craft CAC bylaws. Mr. Ayers made presentations to board meetings chaired by Mr. Obama. Mr. Ayers spoke for the Collaborative before the board. Likewise, Mr. Obama periodically spoke for the board at meetings of the Collaborative.
The Obama campaign notes that Mr. Ayers attended only six board meetings, and stresses that the Collaborative lost its "operational role" at CAC after the first year. Yet the Collaborative was demoted to a strictly advisory role largely because of ethical concerns, since the projects of Collaborative members were receiving grants. CAC's own evaluators noted that project accountability was hampered by the board's reluctance to break away from grant decisions made in 1995. So even after Mr. Ayers's formal sway declined, the board largely adhered to the grant program he had put in place.
Mr. Ayers's defenders claim that he has redeemed himself with public-spirited education work. That claim is hard to swallow if you understand that he views his education work as an effort to stoke resistance to an oppressive American system. He likes to stress that he learned of his first teaching job while in jail for a draft-board sit-in. For Mr. Ayers, teaching and his 1960s radicalism are two sides of the same coin.
Mr. Ayers is the founder of the "small schools" movement (heavily funded by CAC), in which individual schools built around specific political themes push students to "confront issues of inequity, war, and violence." He believes teacher education programs should serve as "sites of resistance" to an oppressive system. (His teacher-training programs were also CAC funded.) The point, says Mr. Ayers in his "Teaching Toward Freedom," is to "teach against oppression," against America's history of evil and racism, thereby forcing social transformation.
The Obama campaign has cried foul when Bill Ayers comes up, claiming "guilt by association." Yet the issue here isn't guilt by association; it's guilt by participation. As CAC chairman, Mr. Obama was lending moral and financial support to Mr. Ayers and his radical circle. That is a story even if Mr. Ayers had never planted a single bomb 40 years ago.
Mr. Kurtz is a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center.
Ray L.,
These people don't want to know the truth about Obama and Ayers, or Obama and Wright or Khalidi or Rezko. It might put a stain on their lying Chicago politician. Not that it would make any difference to them, their cult worship is complete.
Campbell Brown has had it.