The XX Factor: What women really think.

Depends What the Meaning of "Visit'' Is

Update: As it turns out, Sarah Palin didn't actually visit Iraq - but she did see it, from Kuwait, just like she sees Russia from Alaska. (Hey, I saw Margot Fonteyn once - in Paris! Didn't make me a ballerina.) As the Boston Globe reported today, that whole been-to-Iraq thing was even more of a stretch than counting Ireland among the countries she's visited because her plane stopped there to refuel.

Know what, though? Even recognizing that McCain is an awfully high-mileage 72, I don't know how many McCain-Palin supporters will be put off by her lack of experience out in the world. And while I'm sure you're right, Rosa, to doubt whether Palin could pass a Foreign Service Exam, it will be interesting to see whether, even after everything we've been through, voters really care.

They were perfectly aware that Gore knew more than Bush. (In fact, I'm not kidding when I say that compared to Bush in '99, Palin was a regular Madeleine Albright with Charlie Gibson.) Yet voters held that against the know-it-all in the race, rather than the know-nothing. In '04, Kerry lost more points for speaking French than Bush did for knowing so little about the country we were about to invade that it was news to him that Sunnis and Shiites were from two different sects. ("I thought the Iraqis were Muslims,'' he said when this was pointed out to him, shortly before we went in. Which has nothing to do with intelligence; it's what comes of not caring enough to bother to learn.) After eight years of living with the result of such callousness, will we hold Palin to a higher standard? Perhaps so. But with familiarity about the world beyond our borders still considered suspect, put me down as not so sure.