The Shadow Presidency...

...Chapter One. In which our guy shows how it's done...

Kerry is the only elected official on his trip, and he is making an unusual number of stops in the Middle East, suggesting that he wants to go beyond the sometimes-scripted events planned by the Bush administration. Foreign trips are fairly typical for members of Congress -- a large number of House and Senate members are making trips to Iraq in the run-up to the Jan. 30 elections there -- but Kerry insisted on charting his own course for his trip. He is making stops in Israel and its occupied territories, as well as other Middle Eastern nations.

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Kerry's current trip includes meetings with Prime Minister Ariel Sharon of Israel, King Abdullah of Jordan, President Bashar Assad of Syria, and interim prime minister Iyad Allawi of Iraq...

Can you imagine George getting face time with any, let alone all, of those guys if he wasn't POTUS?