Yes, there is another debate going on about what exactly is Bush Doctrine, because three different things have been understood by the blogs and the media to mean that.

And whatever it ends up being, it's not what Gibson thinks it is.

As for the hack called Joe Klein, he should be really mad that Obama doesn't know what Bush Doctrine is either - because Obama said that Clinton would continue Bush Doctrine, to meet only with conditions.

http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalradar/2007/07/obama-clinton-w.html

Seems like another lame "gotcha" question.

Like the one that made the blogs laugh at Josh Marshall's Georgia gaffe.

I'm a Harvard Law grad who follows politics, and if I'd been asked that question I would have asked for clarification too. It's not like the "Bush Doctrine" is studied in school like the Monroe Doctrine. I never heard the phrase the "Bush Doctrine" before and I doubt many people have.

Of course she is just spouting talking points, nothing more than that. Which is why this just reflects McCain's twisted judgement, it has nothing to do with Palin herself besides the fact that she has no knowledge or experience in foreign policy.

McCain obviously put politics and ambition first, country second. Forget Palin, attack McCain's motivation and judgement.

Sarah Palin, Sarah Palin, Sarah Palin....

No she isn't qualified. And yes, that is abundantly clear. I happen to believe Fallows has the best take on this, but I'm sorry, it is for pointy-headed consupmtion only.

http://jamesfallows.theatlantic.com/archives/2008/09/the_palin_interview.php

We can discuss (and we have, endlessly for a week and a half) the myriad reasons why Palin would be a disaster as VP and is truly an astoudingly absurd choice. But meanwhile, another media cycle passes, and Obama slips in the polls. I can't help but think our eyes are way off the ball, and focused on the circus that is Palin-tainment.

We see McCain's selection of this Right Wing amateur as a deal-breaker, but many don't seem to agree.

http://features.csmonitor.com/politics/2008/09/09/palin-moving-crowds-and-poll-numbers/

Sure, call me chicken little, whatever, but I am so damn sick of Palin, I could scream. When you talk to an actual person and try to sway their vote, you don't say, "Palin isn't qualified", you say, "McCain's pick of Palin calls his judgement into question".

Hurt McCain with Palin. That is the idea. Palin is nothing more than a big shiny target right now, and IMO, we aren't tarnishing it much at all.

Can we get back to focusing on McSame and his plans for a 3rd Bush Term?

Greg - you nailed it.

The problem is that she didn't have any idea what Gibson was talking about. None.

Gibson could have stood his ground and just said "Do you know what the Bush Doctrine is?" until she couldn't wiggle out of it. He took pity on her and explained it in rough terms.

Can any of Palin's defenders come up with evidence that she had thought about anything beyond Alaska's borders before being named to the ticket? Not just foreign policy, but anything about the national economy?

Granted, she was familiar with earmarks from Washington. Anything else?

Regarding Iraq, she heard about the surge on the news and said "we need to have a plan here." Now that's reassuring.

Now, after two weeks of instruction, she's spouting McCain's neocon boilerplate.

Meanwhile, Obama leads and Bush follows on foreign policy -- in a timetable for withdrawl from Iraq, in sending more troops to Afghanistan, in acting in Pakistan's tribal regions.

Great to see Oprah Winfrey get boycotted. She has her show with the Obama family and gushes about how wonderful they are and how much she supports them, and then says she will have Palin on, but only after the election. Can you say Fat Racist Pig anyone? I hope her show goes down the tubes as fast as Oilbama's whole campaign.

Does she know what foreign policy is? No.

She's not dumb altogether, but let's face it - she's not smart, either. She has enough to get her through most things she wants to do - PTA president, mayor of a very small town, governor of one of if not the least populous states.

She can handle stuff like that, though not well - she's fucked up any number of things as mayor of Wasilla.

But we are not talking about the usual candidate - most of our candidates do have some credentials, even Repugs, usually. Law school or an MBA or something. She is not bright enough to even have garnered the creds.

So, no she really doesn't know. She's totally unprepared and what's more, she does not have the mental acuity to get prepared.

There is an absolutely classic moment in one interview segment regarding global warming which clearly demonstrates what a terrible choice the McCain campaign made in selecting her as a Vice-Presidential nominee:

“I believe in science, and have such great respect for what they [the scientists] are telling us. I’m not going to disagree with the point that they make: that man’s activities can be attributed to - changes.”

Sarah Palin in an ABC interview with Charles Gibson

Read that again, out loud—or listen to her do so by replaying the clip if you have access to it—and pay close attention. She actually gets it exactly BACKWARD, essentially ‘agreeing’ that global warming is causing changes in man’s activities. What the hell?

She cannot even clear express her denial of her previous claims that there is no connection between human activity and global warming. She manages to reverse the denial, flipping the causal link. Seriously: how ignorant, woefully unprepared and inappropriately expressive could anyone possibly be?

There is no question at all that she is ill prepared. Her answers in all of the segments broadcast so far were—at best—inconsistent, incongruent, illogical, inapplicable and incorrect.

Oh, yeah: and then there were the not-so-clever misrepresentations, the poorly framed denials and the outright lies!

The right end of the political spectrum—and you silly trolls acting at their behest—can spin these interviews any way you and they want, but only a fool would buy the frankly silly explanations and amplifications offered.

Ready on day one? Come on: who’s kidding who here?

It should also be noted that she AGREES with Obama on GOING INTO PAKISTAN if need be to get the bad guys. McCain doesn't think that is right.

The point I take from the interview is not that Palin fumbled the question but that she at no time in the interview did she really seem to have anything but the most superficial understanding of foreign policy. If she got caught on the phrase "Bush Doctrine," but gave otherwise thoughtful answers, that would be one thing. But you can't watch the interview and get the sense with respect to any of the foreign policy questions that Palin understands what she's going on about.

Great comment.

My only possible disagreement isn't really a disagreement - I just think that in addition to not being ready on Day 1, Sarah Palin will not be ready on Days 2 - 999, either.

She doesn't have the mental or emotional equipment necessary to run this country or any country.

Or that when they are articulated, presidential doctrines (the Madison Doctrine, Truman Doctrine, the Carter Doctrine, etc.) are meant to give other countries notice of where the US feels it's interests around the world are so important that it will protect them with force. The intended effect is to not have to use force by warning other countries ahead of time.

The most striking thing I noticed was just how the heavy the editing must have been. How many times was there the classic cut away and the audio wasn't in line w/ the video. Sometimes her lips moved w/out sound. It makes you wonder how bad she really was and uninformed she is to be the VP.

Or that when they are articulated, presidential doctrines (the Madison Doctrine, Truman Doctrine, the Carter Doctrine, etc.) are meant to give other countries notice of where the US feels it's interests around the world are so important that it will protect them with force. The intended effect is to not have to use force by warning other countries ahead of time.

Look at it in the political context. Her fans on the right will defend her with the bogus arguments we can read in this comments section. Her critics on the left and in the center will argue she isn't prepared which you can find all over the Internet today.

It is the undecided voters that matter and they are mainly the independents in the middle. How will they look at this?

She was certainly nervous and that bodes poorly for her. She didn't have much depth; only some rehearsed lines that she kept repeating. She tried to make a joke with Gibson that bombed (he started a question by saying "Maybe I'm a synic,..." and she answered it with "You're a synic..."; it didn't work. So, she did poorly, or at least less than average, and that weakens her and McCain.

But none of this matters. The bottom line on this campaign is captured today in articles by E.J. Dionne and Arianna Huffington; will Obama stand up and claim this election. It isn't about tactics and barely about strategy; it is about whether or not he can consistently embody the "fierce urgency of now" with all of his passion, righteous anger, and force from now until election day.

E.J.: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/09/11/AR2008091102827.html?hpid=opinionsbox1

Arianna:http://www.huffingtonpost.com/arianna-huffington/enough-why-obama-should-r_b_125519.html

About that troll: notice that he's at the top of the trail, as if his overlords told him to jump over the Palin flub right away to try to frame it. The monkeys at the RNC are all over this. The tell is the jab at JMM - too clever, too specific, as if it came from a file...

Yes, the Bush Doctrine is hard to pin down. That she didn't know it doesn't bother me. But what did bother me, of course, is that she really appeared clueless on foreign policy. It was like a kid in school who didn't do their homework and tried to fake it. She did not, to say the least, inspire much confidence.

She was full of talking points, but had no insight. She didn't, or wasn't able to, answer the questions Gibson asked her about foreign policy.

Ms Palin might be a bright and shining star in the eyes of some conservatives. But even those fans of hers must admit that she is in no way ready to be VP.

... Charlie Gibson asked her what she interpreted the Bush Doctrine to be, and she replied, "his world view, you mean?"

Clearly, Palin didn't grasp what Gibson meant by the word "doctrine" as used in a foreign policy context.

Unclear.

It's plausible that she just didn't know what the Bush Doctrine was and was trying to hide that fact.

Or not.

It seems the strongest defense for McCain/Palin here is that there's no firm definition of what the "Bush Doctrine" is. But she still could've done better then "in what respect, Charlie?" when asked.

He shouldn't have given her anything more than the date of 2002's national security strategy, and left her floundering. She's been getting tutored for the last week; the first thing they should have done was have her skim these going back the last 30 years or so. Particularly since they're trying to make her look like CiC material.

And another thing: sure, "Bush Doctrine" is media shorthand for a nebulous concept. But she knew she was getting interviewed by the media, and they'd coined the phrase and harped on it for a full 6 months before the Iraq War, so if she'd read the newspaper or listened to the news, it should have rang some kind of bell. It obviously didn't.

I'm no foreign policy scholar, but I'll make an attempt at defining it:
- Those who harbor terrorists are terrorists.
- We won't make concessions to terrorists.
- Pre-emptive strikes are justified, since we were in imminent danger
- Unilateralism was justified, since no one else believes our intelligence.

I seems to me that every other day, and I'm not bitching, just sayin', so please don't jump my ass - it was thoroughly jumped yesterday - that Arianna and everyone decides the entire burden is on Obama.

I don't know why that bothers me exactly, but dayum, what the hell does the man have to do to please everyone, finally?

I keep seeing someone who has all but healed the sick and it's never enough -

o well, I am also not always correct, so - that's what being human is -

No no. I agree with Redshift above. The doctrine is to attack as a means of prevention or, by another name, Iraq.

That brings it home I should think.

Good catch, Redshift. Stuck in my brain was the argument that since Bush got us into a preventive war and Palin would only go so far as a preemptive war, Palin could draw a distinction with Bush. I got stuck in the bizarro world of trying to justify Iraq as preemptive, to diminish the possible argument that she's actually less of an extremist hawk then Bush.

I don't know whether McCain is the master of misdirection, or whether Democrat's tendencies to overthink things make ourselves our own worst enemy. I'm starting to lean on the former, in which case we should realize we're being played and drop our feeding the media's obsession with Sarah and get John back in our targets.

McCain was probably hoping something like this would happen -- now they can continue to distract with their "the media/Obama are disrespectful to this little lady" bullcrap and keep away from talking about the real issues.

I sometimes listen to Christian talk radio, and that's the code her response was in. They talk about "world view" and how their "world view" differentiates them from others. So she replied, "His world view?" Like Charlie's asking about church doctrine.

I sometimes listen to Christian talk radio, and that's the code her response was in. They talk about "world view" and how their "world view" differentiates them from others. So she replied, "His world view?" Like Charlie's asking about church doctrine.

According to wikipedia: "Scholars identify seven different Bush Doctrines"

No wonder Palin didn't know what Gibson was referring to. It's obvious he didn't understand it either!