While President Bush spoke at the UN General Assembly in New York on Tuesday, Sarah Palin conducted back-to-back meetings with three foreign policy leaders across town.  The McCain campaign announced on Sunday that Palin would be meeting with Afghan President Hamid Karzai, Colombian President Alvaro Uribe, and former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, but on Tuesday the campaign refused to allow the press inside the meeting rooms to actually cover the events.

Of course, the McCain campaign barred the press from the meetings because they were designed solely as briefing sessions for Palin on several serious foreign policy issues.  Hell, Sarah Palin’s previous foreign policy experience consisted of living in close proximity to Russia.  Obviously the campaign wouldn’t let the press cover what must have been embarrassingly one-sided meetings.

Ironically, the campaign’s pathetic attempt to spin the press coverage ended up sort of backfiring.  The media slammed the campaign for restricting the reporters’ access, and the one exchange the press managed to catch before being ushered out of the room was about President Karzai’s first child, born last year.  The mom thing, again.  At a foreign policy event.

In its most boring post ever, NYT’s The Caucus live-blogged the shenanigans:

Update | 12:17 p.m.: Word now is that a print reporter will be allowed in at the next two meetings.

Update | 12:02 p.m.: The campaign is relenting and letting in the television producer, so the camera crew will be going as well. But print reporters are up in arms about being excluded.

Media Rebellion: But the McCain-Palin campaign’s sharp limitations on coverage of the meetings have sparked a mini-revolt - and a threatened boycott - among the press corps.

A stand-off has ensued, with the networks threatening not to send cameras.

I can’t believe they were reduced to live-blogging about the experience of not reporting on an event.  The campaign trail must really suck.