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"The power to conduct and negotiate foreign policy lies with the executive branch and the executive branch only...."
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Something that distinguishes left from right in this country is the former's tendency to make up easily undermined facts. There is no basis, constitutional or otherwise, for the above statement. Of course the executive branch has no exclusive authority to "conduct and negotiate foreign policy." The constitution was designed to have all national policy chiefly made by the legislative branch, as it is in every republic. An exclusive right by the executive to conduct foreign policy would make the executive a foregin policy dictatorship, which of course the right prefers, but only when the president is a Republican.
Norman Orenstein, resident scholar at Bush's favorite think tank put it this way in last November's
Foreign Affairs: "The making of sound U.S. foreign policy depends on a vigorous, deliberative, and often combative process that involves both the executive and the legislative branches. The country's Founding Fathers gave each branch both exclusive and overlapping powers in the realm of foreign policy, according to each one's comparative advantage -- inviting them, as the constitutional scholar Edwin Corwin has put it, 'to struggle for the privilege of directing American foreign policy.'"
Aside from the totalitarian-leaning right, everyone, including purportedly President Bush, agrees with that statement. The protests over the Pelosi trip that simultaneously ignored the same kind of trips by GOP legislators quite transparently amounted to a partisan quibble over nothing, just grist for the right-wing propaganda machine.
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Well of course everyone can agree with that statement. The rub lies with to what degree does the person third in line for the Presidency flout the wishes of the sitting President by making proclamations on foreign soil that directly contradict the foreign policy aims of that President. Implementation of the policy of Syrian isolation is difficult and easily undermined when such a powerful member of the U.S. government openly and very publicly treats said policy with disdain. She gives comfort to and emboldens those opposed to Bush's Middle East policy. Perhaps next Nancy should go to North Korea and kibitz with Kim Jong-il, perhaps make a Pyonyang Proclamation "Freedom reigns on the Korean Peninsula" while simultaneously bringing news of a reunification offer from the South LOL. But no, no matter how enlightened Ms. Pelosi is regarding the correct course of our foreign policy, it has traditionally been the President who sets foreign policy, directly contradicting the policy on foreign soil may be noble on some level but is counterproductive to a coherent policy. Win the Presidency and run foreign affairs how you see fit.