According to Charlie Black, the assassination of Benazir Bhutto in December was an "unfortunate event," but it was a turning point in John McCain's primary campaign. McCain's "knowledge and ability to talk about it re-emphasized that this is the guy who's ready to be commander in chief. And it helped us."

Senator McCain's general election campaign depends even more on his national security and foreign policy experience, his claim that he's ready to be commander in chief. McCain has traveled the world, he knows the leaders.

When Bhutto was assassinated, McCain said he knew Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf personally, and could get him on the telephone. The United States picks up the tab for more than a quarter of Pakistan's total military spending. The president of Pakistan is probably going to take our president's call.

Sure, there's an advantage in our president's having a rapport with other world leaders, but Anne Applebaum observed that we usually place our trust in world leaders for "their excellent English or their preference for Scotch whiskey, their interest in 'doing business with us' (in the Saudi case), or in liberalizing--even democratizing--their countries (as in the case of Bhutto)," when those very "western" qualities "are precisely what some of their countrymen hate most about them."

And many of the westernized leaders with whom we are so impressed turn out to be enthusiastic participants in a kleptocracy that is justly resented by their own countrymen.

We've made enormous misjudgments because we acted on our estimation of leaders, not an understanding of the societies over which they presided. Norman Mailer claimed, perhaps obnoxiously, to have asked President Kennedy after the Bay of Pigs, "Don't you understand the enormity of your mistake--you invade a country without understanding its music?"

After World War II, governments that we thought were stable, governments headed by leaders we found impressive for their western qualities, repeatedly fell to revolutions or coups. To avoid unpleasant surprises, we developed expertise in the State Department and our intelligence agencies to understand other nations. We employed analysts who have lived in different nations and have friends who live there still, speak the language fluently, read the newspapers, watch the television, respect the religion, eat the food, and listen to the music. Our analysts stay in touch with the Americans at universities and in business who travel frequently in those countries and know people there.

With the exception of environmental scientists, no one in the federal government has had less to say about our government's policies in the last seven years than those analysts. According to the neo-conservatives, any nation's complexity can be simplified by Bradley Fighting Vehicles in the center of the capitol city. The Bush Administration had open scorn for the analysts who argued that Iraq was an intensely nationalistic society that would resent a foreign army on their soil, and that it would be difficult to establish a government that Iraqis would accept as legitimate.

I've now been on a few congressional delegations, or "CODELs," and met with presidents, prime ministers, foreign ministers and parliamentarians.

But the most important lessons I've learned from CODELs have not always come from meetings with government officials.

I visited Africa on a CODEL last August, stopping in Morocco, Ghana, Liberia, Uganda and Kenya. We visited schools, orphanages, hospitals, a refugee camp, and on and on. We met with the Presidents of Ghana and Liberia and the Prime Ministers of Morocco and Uganda. The embassy staff in each country briefed us, and we had a memorandum on each country prepared by the Congressional Research Service.

Our last stop was Kenya, a bulwark of stability in an unstable region. We did not meet with any government officials in Kenya. We spent the afternoon at a game park within sight of the Nairobi skyline and had dinner at an embarrassingly touristy restaurant, The Carnivore. Kenya was a tourist destination, and the day and night we spent there was a treat after more than a week of hard travel.

But we spent a couple of hours in the morning visiting with NGOs, United Nations agencies and others working in Kibera, a slum in Nairobi. We met with a largish group of "stakeholders" to discuss efforts to improve living conditions, including residents and "structure owners." The more questions we asked, the more guarded the answers became. Then we walked through the slum. This is what I was able to piece together: Kibera is on government land, and the government gave some kind of permit to occupy tiny parcels. The land had long been occupied when the government first issued permits. The government did not issue the permits to the families occupying the parcels, but to the politically connected. The "structure owners" held government permits. The structures were a few feet square and were generally plywood or corrugated metal nailed to boards. The structures had no foundations, and were inches apart, if not touching. The cost of construction of a structure was well less than a year's rent. There was no water, sewer or electricity. There were no streets, just muddy footpaths. Illness from unsanitary conditions was common. The residents of Kibera worked in factories in Nairobi or as domestic servants.

Kibera is about three quarters the area of New York's Central Park, and has a population of maybe 1.5 million. About half of Nairobi's population lives in Kibera or similar slums, which together occupy five percent of the land.

As our delegation walked through Kibera, we all asked the same question: how can this be a stable society?

Kenya had elections on December 27. For months before the elections, polls showed the opposition candidate leading the incumbent president despite one-sided election coverage by state media. Early returns showed that the opposition party was ahead, but the election commission declared the incumbent president the winner and the incumbent was hastily sworn in for another term. Kenyan and international observers condemned the elections as rigged.

After the election commission announced the results, riots broke out across Kenya. Kenyan police used lethal force against the rioters, allegedly targeting opponents and ignoring violence by pro-government gangs. More than a thousand people were killed in the violence after the election and an estimated 300,000 were displaced. Some of the worst rioting was in Kibera.

In response to both domestic and international pressure, the rival parties agreed to a power-sharing arrangement and to hold a new election within two years. The violence has stopped for now at least.

In short, Kenya was not a stable society when we walked through Kibera last August.

Kenya has tribal divisions, which were probably the immediate reason for the rioting after the elections. But there is also anger over income inequality and parasitic corruption by political and economic elites.

John McCain has met with world leaders, but has he learned about a society by walking through a slum? Will he base our foreign policy on his manly ability to take the measure of the leaders of other societies, as President Bush has?

No president understands the music of Cuba, Pakistan, Kenya
and on and on. The question is whether they are willing to listen to people who
do. Will Senator McCain listen?