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we all know what it means, expect for Palin.
Ahhh.
What the Right is doing IS making the subject confusing; taking it away from, "Palin didn't know this" to "It is more complicated than that, and the race is about to start".
It's gonna work. (even though the issue in and of itself isn't a big deal to me)
I have to admit, however, I didn't like her calling him "Charlie" all the time...seemed too contrived and folksy.
we all know what it means, expect for Palin.
How in the world do you interpret the piece you quoted as Gibson trying to bait her into saying she wanted Israel to nuke Iran? Where was the mentioning of nuking Iran? I see him mentioning taking out IRAN'S nuclear facilities, not Israel using their own nukes to attack Iran.
And the "she held her ground" is laughable. Almost all of her responses to the foreign policy questions leaned toward the uninformed or evasive.
@ Darrin trying to spin this.
Dude, she ed up. She didn't know what the Bush Doctrine was. Period. Noticed how she responded to other questions quickly but with the Bush Doctrine, you can see the "oh " look. When Gibson explained it to her, Palin had the look of a student learning something new.
Anyway this is not suprising and it shouldnt be suprising to you because she admitted that she didnt really pay much attention to the republicans.
Charlie Gibson's Gaff
By Charles Krauthammer
Saturday, September 13, 2008;
"At times visibly nervous . . . Ms. Palin most visibly stumbled when she was asked by Mr. Gibson if she agreed with the Bush doctrine. Ms. Palin did not seem to know what he was talking about. Mr. Gibson, sounding like an impatient teacher, informed her that it meant the right of 'anticipatory self-defense.' "
-- New York Times, Sept. 12
Informed her? Rubbish.
The New York Times got it wrong. And Charlie Gibson got it wrong.
There is no single meaning of the Bush Doctrine. In fact, there have been four distinct meanings, each one succeeding another over the eight years of this administration -- and the one Charlie Gibson cited is not the one in common usage today. It is utterly different.
He asked Palin, "Do you agree with the Bush Doctrine?"
She responded, quite sensibly to a question that is ambiguous, "In what respect, Charlie?"
Sensing his "gotcha" moment, Gibson refused to tell her. After making her fish for the answer, Gibson grudgingly explained to the moose-hunting rube that the Bush doctrine "is that we have the right of anticipatory self-defense."
Wrong.
I know something about the subject because, as the Wikipedia entry on the Bush Doctrine notes, I was the first to use the term. In the cover essay of the June 4, 2001, issue of the Weekly Standard en led, "The Bush Doctrine: ABM, Kyoto, and the New American Unilateralism," I suggested that the Bush administration policies of unilaterally withdrawing from the ABM treaty and rejecting the Kyoto protocol, together with others, amounted to a radical change in foreign policy that should be called the Bush Doctrine.
Then came 9/11, and that notion was immediately superseded by the advent of the war on terror. In his address to the joint session of Congress nine days after 9/11, President Bush declared: "Either you are with us or you are with the terrorists. From this day forward any nation that continues to harbor or support terrorism will be regarded by the United States as a hostile regime." This "with us or against us" policy regarding terror -- first deployed against Pakistan when Secretary of State Colin Powell gave President Musharraf that seven-point ultimatum to end support for the Taliban and support our attack on Afghanistan -- became the essence of the Bush Doctrine.
Until Iraq. A year later, when the Iraq war was looming, Bush offered his major justification by enunciating a doctrine of preemptive war. This is the one Charlie Gibson thinks is the Bush doctrine.
t's not. It's the third in a series and was superseded by the fourth and current definition of the Bush doctrine, the most sweeping formulation of the Bush approach to foreign policy and the one that most clearly and distinctively defines the Bush years: the idea that the fundamental mission of American foreign policy is to spread democracy throughout the world. It was most dramatically enunciated in Bush's second inaugural address: "The survival of liberty in our land increasingly depends on the success of liberty in other lands. The best hope for peace in our world is the expansion of freedom in all the world."
This declaration of a sweeping, universal American freedom agenda was consciously meant to echo John Kennedy's pledge in his inaugural address that the United States "shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, in order to assure the survival and the success of liberty." It draws also from the Truman doctrine of March 1947 and from Wilson's 14 points.
If I were in any public foreign policy debate today, and my adversary were to raise the Bush doctrine, both I and the audience would assume -- unless my interlocutor annotated the reference otherwise -- that he was speaking about the grandly proclaimed (and widely attacked) freedom agenda of the Bush administration.
Not the Gibson doctrine of preemption.
Not the "with us or against us" no-neutrality-is-permitted policy of the immediate post-9/11 days.
Not the unilateralism that characterized the pre-9/11 first year of the Bush administration.
Presidential doctrines are inherently malleable and difficult to define. The only fixed "doctrines" in American history are the Monroe and the Truman doctrines which come out of single presidential statements during administrations where there were few other contradictory or conflicting foreign policy crosscurrents.
Such is not the case with the Bush Doctrine.
Yes, Sarah Palin didn't know what it is. But neither does Charlie Gibson. And at least she didn't pretend to know -- while he looked down his nose and over his glasses with weary disdain, sighing and "sounding like an impatient teacher," as the Times noted. In doing so, he captured perfectly the establishment snobbery and intellectual condescension that has characterized the chattering classes' reaction to the mother of five who presumes to play on their stage.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...d=opinionsbox1
Last edited by Biernutz; 09-12-2008 at 08:12 PM.
wow i don't usually comment here but that was just such severe ownage.
Pretty disingenuous of Krauthammer to act like he isn't a prominent member of the "chattering classes", and he frequently condescends Obama on the very same grounds.
1. Krauthammer is a complete and utter tool. Neocons, die!
2. Gibson was asking a simple question. It was quickly apparent Palin had no idea what the Bush Doctrine was or is. But before that, he gave ample room for her to expand: what is your interpretation?
3. Gibson's defintion is pretty straight up the expected value of the Bush Doctrine.
4. He was clearly stunned that such a softball turned out to be a 'gotcha'.
5. I don't care if Gibson wasn't correct within 0.00001% accuracy, even so. He is not running for any office.
6. Palin showed herself a total lightweight, not just on this question, but throughout the evening.
7. McCain did all of us a disservice by picking a completely clueless person to back up a sickly old man. His judgment is the real issue here.
8. All you 'Nailin' Palin' squaders, just give it up. She sucks. She may be alright in four years, after she gets used to the world outside of Alaska. But she'd be a disaster right now.
All you libs are just frothing at the mouth over this but here's something you should consider: you guys HATE Bush and everything he stands for so you know a lot about him and his policies so you can condemn and criticize him every chance you get.
But ask the NORMAL, every day guy on the street what the "Bush Doctrine" is and I bet you 9 out of 10 wouldn't have a clue!
Also, it seems you're overlooking the fact that Gibson came across as incredibly rude, arrogant, elitist, and condescending - and I think the average citizen isn't going to go for that.
Maybe you're comfortable with mediocrity, ignorance, and incompetence, but I expect more than "every day guy on the street" level competence when it comes to an office as high as VP.
Well let's look at this a little closer then. Since it's quite obvious from the above article that the Bush Doctrine has meant several different things over the years; and given the fact that Charlie boy didn't exactly specify what he meant by the question; and given the fact that Sarah Palin has been the Governor of Alaska and not a member of Bush's administration - why should she have been expected to know EXACTLY what Charlie meant?
As soon as he explained his "understanding" of the Bush Doctrine, she knew exactly what he was talking about and gave a pretty decent answer.
What does that have to do with anything?
Those same people probably couldn't tell you how many articles are in the Cons ution, what the EU is and how many countries are part of it or point out Iraq on a map. Is it so bad that we should go by the LCD now?
boy - sometimes I forget that reading comprehension isn't a strong suit with many of the posters here.
Anyway - that comment was made in response to all the lib posters here who are saying "we all know what the Bush Doctrine is", and "everybody but Sarah Palin knows what it is". I was merely pointing out that probably MOST people DON"T know what it is!
"EU"? "LCD"? I bet you think yer so smart with yer abbreviations and what not. in' elitists think they know everything.
And what the do LCD screens have to do with this topic anyway?
I tried to tell you lib s early on in the other thread.
Remain ingorant if you wish.
on foreign policy, krauthammer is one of the intellectual figures on the conservative side. even though he is obviously a conservative, he is also a very intelligent person who argues his side very well. gibson also had no idea what he was talking about when he mentioned the bush doctrine. the bush doctrine ambiguously refers to about four parts: unilateralism, classification of terrorist states, preemption, and the unwavering spread of democracy.
the transcript above shows that palin wanted clarification when gibson just threw out the phrase "bush doctrine," which can mean the four parts krauthammer mentioned. gibson, who clearly only had the preemption part of the bush doctrine in mind, continued (knowingly or not) to let palin fish. the "september 2002" doctrine included two argmuents for invading iraq. one of the reasons was that bush claimed all states that refused to combat terrorism were by default, harboring them. obviously iraq was not with the United States, thus it was classified as a terrorist state and gave the United States the right to launch a preemptive strike to prevent future aid to terrorists. even though there was little evidence iraq was harboring terrorists at the time, they were "either with us or against us." palin then gives a vague answer about the terrorism part of the doctrine which gibson quickly jumps on. if gibson had known there were different parts to the doctrine, he should have answered palin he was talking about preemption when palin asked "in what respect?" instead of leading her around.GIBSON: Do you agree with the Bush doctrine?
PALIN: In what respect, Charlie?
GIBSON: The Bush -- well, what do you -- what do you interpret it to be?
PALIN: His world view.
GIBSON: No, the Bush doctrine, enunciated September 2002, before the Iraq war.
PALIN: I believe that what President Bush has attempted to do is rid this world of Islamic extremism, terrorists who are bent on destroying our nation. There have been blunders along the way, though. There have been mistakes made. And with new leadership, and that's the beauty of American elections, of course, and democracy, is with new leadership comes opportunity to do things better.
GIBSON: The Bush doctrine, as I understand it, is that we have the right of anticipatory self-defense, that we have the right to a preemptive strike against any other country that we think is going to attack us. Do you agree with that?
PALIN: I agree that a president's job, when they swear in their oath to uphold our Cons ution, their top priority is to defend the United States of America.
I know that John McCain will do that and I, as his vice president, families we are blessed with that vote of the American people and are elected to serve and are sworn in on January 20, that will be our top priority is to defend the American people.
GIBSON: Do we have a right to anticipatory self-defense? Do we have a right to make a preemptive strike again another country if we feel that country might strike us?
PALIN: Charlie, if there is legitimate and enough intelligence that tells us that a strike is imminent against American people, we have every right to defend our country. In fact, the president has the obligation, the duty to defend.
gibson assumed that preemption was the only part of the bush doctrine and that palin should have known it. it is gibson's fault for intentionally being vague and it is palin's fault for not knowing to correct gibson.
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