ST. PAUL, Minn. -- Senator John McCain—who has spent years making the rounds among VIPs and diplomats at the international conferences of Davos, Munich, and the others—is regarded elsewhere in the world as an old hand at foreign policy. In my reporting abroad, if people disagree with him they at least respect his experience. But what about Governor Sarah Palin, whom his campaign elevated Friday to a heartbeat away from the presidency? How does the campaign maintain that the world has nothing to fear?

Several lines of (sometimes contradictory) argument have been floating around at the Republican convention here to answer concerns about Palin. One is that she’s no less qualified than Barack Obama to deal with foreign affairs, since service on a Senate committee doesn’t count as experience. Another is that experience is about character more than knowledge—which staff, at any rate, can provide—and victory over the powerful Alaskan political machine shows the character she’ll bring to the presidency. A third line of thought is that judgment is more important than experience (this undermines McCain’s critique of Obama), and while she’s been around less than Obama, at least she supports the surge, which conventional wisdom now says worked. (Obama has danced around the question of its success.) Finally, and half-heartedly, Palin is said to know Russia, since Alaska is right next door. Here is a McCain spokesman struggling to make some of these points:

Senator Fred Thompson, the former senator and presidential hopeful—perceived for much of his campaign to be a less-than-strenuous student of politics and the world—tried some of these arguments on Newsweek editors at a lunch yesterday. And he made some concessions to Palin’s unfamiliarity with the world (she didn’t have a passport until two years ago): “No nominee I’ve ever heard of has had all the boxes checked. You talk about a ‘balanced ticket.’” But he did something I didn’t expect Republicans here to do: he set a high bar for Palin. Could she just answer a tricky debate question about foreign policy by saying she’s still learning? No.

"She has to be fully prepared and has to know the names of the foreign leaders," he said. "That’s rule number-one. She’s going to be tested in every conceivable way, and she’s got to be able to handle it. You should assume that smart people have some walking-around knowledge. She’s the governor of a large state; she’s not out hunting moose all the time. She’ll start at a better place than most people give her credit for. It’s not like teaching a toddler to play piano."

If Thompson is right, maybe Palin has something up her sleeve for the debate against Joe Biden everybody thinks she’s going to lose.

P.S. On the subject of veep picks, Thompson had some choice words about being on a congressional delegation abroad with the famously garrulous Joe Biden (“my friend”): “Traveling with Biden is one of the most unrewarding experiences you can have, because he monopolizes the conversation wherever you are, with whoever you’re speaking to, in whatever country you’re visiting.”