THIS WOMAN IS THE BANE OF MY EXISTENCE. HER NOMINATION IS A LOAD OF HORSESHIT. SHE HAS NO EXPERIENCE AND SHE WAS JUST PICKED BECAUSE SHE'S YOUNG AND PRETTY. SHE SAYS SHE'S GOING TO "REFORM" WASHINGTON. MCCAIN HAS BEEN IN WASHINGTON FOR 22 YEARS. WHAT, SHE'S GOING TO REFORM him?! AND NOTE ALSO THAT HER SPEECHES ARE WRITTEN BY BUSH'S SPEECHWRITER.
PALIN IS ANTIFEMINIST. I DON'T CARE IF SHE HAS A VAGINA. SHE'S A MORON.
Why Palin's "Bush Doctrine" Gaffe Matters: Does She Know What Foreign Policy Doctrine Is? By Greg Sargent - September 12, 2008, 11:34AM There's a spirited debate going on this morning over whether it matters that Sarah Palin betrayed a clear lack of knowledge of the Bush Doctrine during last night's ABC News interview.
Richard Starr of The Weekly Standard (via Ben Smith) suggests it wasn't a big deal because the Bush Doctrine has no universally acknowledged single meaning.
But Joe Klein counters that it shows that "this woman clearly doesn't know what she's talking about." Matthew Yglesias wonders whether John McCain even bothered talking to Palin about her foreign policy views before picking her as back-up commander-in-chief. And James Fallows points out that it betrays a minimal to non-existent interest in world affairs.
Here's my take. The issue here isn't just that Palin didn't know what the Bush Doctrine was. It's that she didn't appear to comprehend the notion that there's such a thing as foreign policy doctrine at all.
The key exchange occurred when 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. She didn't grasp that he was probing her on the question of overarching foreign policy vision -- what set of intellectual guidelines should govern America's conduct in the world and define how we view one of the central moral challenges of our time: Deciding on what constitutes proper use of our overwhelming military power abroad.
This was driven home when Gibson defined the Bush Doctrine for her and Palin responded not with any kind of discussion of the doctrine itself but with boilerplate about Bush's hunt for terrorists.
Does Palin even know that competing foreign policy visions or doctrines exist and that the clash between them is one of the key things this election is all about? Does she even know that articulating and implementing such a vision is, you know, part of what a presidential administration does? Sure doesn't look like it.