Charlie Gibson Got It Wrong
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| Sat, 09-13-2008 - 2:36pm |
By Charles Krauthammer
Saturday, September 13, 2008; A17
"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 entitled, "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Then came 9/11, and that notion was immediately superseded by the advent of the war on terror.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.
It'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.

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I agree with you that Palin seemed to pretend to know what the Bush doctrine was, and that she'd have been better off asking outright, "What is the Bush doctrine?" I'd never heard of it, myself, and I don't think any less of Palin cuz she didn't know. (Of course, I didn't think much of her to begin with.)
I'm 100% for Obama, but like others who posted on this thread, I did not like Gibson's patronizing attitude toward her during the interview.
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http://www.pnhp.org/news/2009/october/meet_the_new_health_.php
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DQTBYQlQ7yM
I really only want to comment on the following paragraph by you.
Indeed, the Obama campaign is now saying it is ready to take the gloves off against McCain. They rolled out a new ad Friday mocking McCain as out of touch and old-fashioned, even though it was McCain who picked a young woman as a running mate while Obama opted for an old white guy who's been sitting in the Senate for 36 years.
Actually, McCain did not pick a young woman to be his running mate. He wanted Joe Lieberman, but Karl Rove told him "no". Rove told him he needed a young female, if he wanted to win.
TO ALL:
It's ironic to me, how the press has not been able to interview her until Gibson. Had she been a man, that never would have happened. Having listened to her speak, then hearing her answers to Gibson, was an eye opener. She back-tracked and/or gave non-answers to many of his questions. Flip-flopping in actuality. She has been caught in telling lies. She has taken credit for things she did not do within her state. She likes to say she was against the bridge to nowhere, that Alaska can build it's own bridges without taxpayers paying for it. However, she leaves out the fact that she took the money that was ear marked for the bridge, and has yet to give an accounting on how she has spent it.
In no way does she have more experience than Obama. She was mayor of a very small town. She fired the librarian, because of her refusal to pull "unacceptable" books off the shelves. She has been governor for 19 months, of a state that has a total population of fewer than a million people. Obama was in the IL senate for eight years prior to being elected to represent IL at the federal level.
Someone commented about what Rev Wright had to say. What about what her husband had to say?! Have you heard the recording of him saying how much he hates our government, and wishes they were all dead? I heard it
Rose
Rose
back-tracking on things I had heard her say in speaches. She was coached very well, in what she should or shouldn't say.
Hellooooooooooo............ backtracking is Obama's middle name. He sounds like a fricken tape recording, speaking of being coached LOL LOL LOL!
Really? Guess my kids spent time learning it in history for nothing then. By the way were you aware that the world is not flat?
Aren't you aware that your girl holding the sign in
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