In an episode of The West Wing, President Bartlet (Martin Sheen) said: "When I was running as a governor, I didn't know anything. I made them start Bartlet College in my dining room. Two hours every morning on foreign affairs and the military."
Philip Rucker and Robert Costa report at The Washington Post:
On a recent Monday at Washington’s Willard InterContinental hotel, Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker was schooled on the world by some of the GOP’s leading foreign-policy lights. In a two-hour tutorial, seated around a table in the Taft Room sipping sodas and coffee, they used detailed regional maps to lead the likely presidential candidate on a tour of the globe’s hot spots: Israel and the Middle East, Latin America, Russia and Ukraine.
The reason for Walker’s crash course was urgent: He has not impressed many leading Republicans with his grasp of foreign affairs. He drew mockery from members of both parties last month for refusing to talk about foreign policy on a trip to London and then for comparing his experience battling labor protesters to taking on Islamic State terrorists.
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Walker, who has surged into the top tier of Republican presidential contenders, has been packing his calendar with foreign-policy sessions like the one at the Willard — a visit with a former Navy secretary one day, a tête-à-tête with a former secretary of state on another. He has trips planned to five countries this spring, including Israel. This weekend, he has booked four sit-downs with foreign-policy scholars at the American Enterprise Institute’s summit in Sea Island, Ga.
At the close of each meeting, Walker solicits reading recommendations and has told tutors he has already digested the 9/11 commission report and Henry Kissinger’s “World Order.”
