Ignore The Shiny Bauble

Washington Post:

The list of foreign leaders GOP vice president Sarah Palin will meet this week in New York just keeps getting longer.

In addition to having private sessions with Afghan president Hamid Karzai and Colombian president Alvaro Uribe scheduled for Tuesday, the Alaska governor now has a more elaborate list of heads of state lined up for Wednesday.

According to the campaign, she will meet Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili; Ukrainian President Victor Yushchenko; Iraqi President Jalal Talabani; Pakistani President Asif Ali Zadari; and Indian Prime Minister Manhoman Singh in a single day.

And Wednesday offers Palin a tete-a-tete with another category of globe trotter: she'll also be meeting with U2 frontman Bono, whose work with the ONE Campaign has earned frequent plaudits from GOP presidential nominee John McCain on the campaign trail.

This is clearly an attempt by the McCain campaign to change the subject from the economy (which, for the party in executive power, is a sure loser when the economy is bad) back to Palin.

The hope here is that, before the debate on Friday, media will be irresistibly drawn to the lure of an absurd number of meetings on one day--including the most irresistible media lure, Bono.

Even if there is conflict about the meetings, they wager, the subject is changed back to whether Palin is/is not qualified, rather than a powerful build, right up to the debate, to what is now the most important, relevant, and most salient topic: the economy.

On which they lose.

Ignore that shiny bauble. As they say, everything has changed.

Be smart.

Don't fall for it.

Stay with the economy.