This week, Sens. John McCain (R-AZ), Barack Obama (D-IL), and Joe Biden (D-DE) all were contacted by Defense Secretary Robert Gates or Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice regarding the Iraq security agreement.

In today’s White House press briefing, spokesman Dana Perino explained that the adminstration contacted the candidates “to keep them equitably informed.” “One of them is going to win the election, and they will be taking over and having to deal with these issues,” Perino explained. But nobody called Gov. Sarah Palin. In today’s State Department briefing, reporters got a chuckle out of Palin being left out:

Q: You called Senator Biden, you called McCain. Did you also call Governor Palin?

McCORMACK: No. If you hadn’t noticed, she’s a governor. Not a senator or a congressman.

Q: She’s a vice presidential candidate.

McCORMACK: Right.

Q: She also has extensive foreign affairs experience. (LAUGHTER)

McCORMACK: Right. I explained to you the reasoning behind the phone call.

Q: Maybe if this has to do with Russia, you would have called her.

Watch it:

While Sean McCormack insisted the apparent snub was not intentional, it’s puzzling that Palin was left out of the administration’s effort to build support for the agreement. As the AP noted, “presumably Palin is an important political figure too. And, like Biden, she has a son currently serving in Iraq who would be directly affected by the so-called Status of Forces, or SOFA, agreement.”

Is it because of Palin’s lack of foreign policy potential? In a September interview with CNN, Rice was reluctant to say Palin has “enough experience” on foreign policy. “Well, obviously — Of course she doesn’t have that,” said First Lady Laura Bush last month regarding Palin’s foreign affairs experience.

With reports that a long-negotiated draft status of forces agreement has been submitted to the Iraqi parliament, it’s interesting that former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright chose this moment to come out against one of the agreement’s most significant planks, a target date for the complete withdrawal of U.S. troops:

[Sec. Albright] said Thursday the Iraq war has created damaging consequences for U.S. diplomacy, but Washington should not agree to a specific deadline for withdrawing troops in the midst of conflict – something proposed last year by the candidate she now supports, Sen. Barack Obama.

“I never was for a date certain,” Mrs. Albright told editors and reporters at The Washington Times. “In Bosnia, we gave a date certain, and then we couldn’t get out and that undercut our credibility.” [...]

Mrs. Albright called for “a plan to get out [of Iraq] in a systematic way.” She said she supports a timeline, which she insisted is different from a “date certain.”

Even recognizing what a subjective thing “credibility” is in debates about international politics, I’m unaware of any evidence that would support Sec. Albright’s claim that U.S. credibility was undercut by our not getting out of Bosnia by the appointed date.

As to the question of a “timeline” versus a “date certain,” didn’t we already do this dance with President Bush? First, no timeline because a timeline was tantamount to surrendering to Al Qaeda. Then, acknowledgment of a “notional time horizon” or some such. Finally, commitment to a timeline, with a half-hearted attempt to define the timeline as “not a timeline.” It’s now generally understood that we have a timeline, and that when that timeline ends in 2011, U.S. forces will be out of Iraq. Though the agreement still needs to be approved by the Iraqi parliament, it’s unclear why Sec. Albright is playing the sort of semantic games that even the Bush administration has effectively abandoned.

No one that I’m aware of suggests that withdrawal should take place without any regard to “realities on the ground.” What critics of a “date certain” never seem to recognize is that overwhelming Iraqi political opposition to a continued U.S. military presence — coupled with overwhelming Iraqi political support for a set date for withdrawal — represents a pretty significant reality on the ground. Very few seem willing to even consider that removing the U.S. military from Iraq is itself a prerequisite for sustainable Iraqi political accommodation, and that an open-ended U.S. military commitment — even one with some vaguely defined withdrawal date — acts a disincentive for necessary compromises.