I wish this mattered

Some of my go-to blogs on foreign policy are aghast that Sarah Palin clearly has no idea what the Bush Doctrine is. See, for example, Ilan Goldenberg:

Clearly Palin did not have the foggiest idea what Gibson meant.  This is absolutely huge.  The Bush doctrine of preemption and the National Security Strategy of 2002 was the central element of debate for almost 2 years in the foreign policy community and in the country during the run up to the invasion of Iraq and in the years after.  It was probably the single greatest shift in U.S. foreign policy in a generation.

There were pages and pages of ink spilled on this and it took up hours of debate.  It was a central issue in the 2004 campaign.  For her to not know what it is, raises serious questions about her experience and preparation to potentially be the leader of the free world.

I’m sure, if any of the mainstream media pick this up, the McCain campaign will say it’s just the kind of thing that foreign policy elitists care about. Most Americans don’t know and don’t care. That’s true. But most Americans shouldn’t be president or vice-president. Yet further evidence, if any were needed, of McCain’s absolute dereliction of duty in picking Palin.

2 thoughts on “I wish this mattered

  1. lee

    Not true that most Americans don’t care about the Bush Doctrine. I am a 59 year old who has watched as America has entered into a war every decade I’ve been alive. What does it take for a 72 year old politican to pick someone who at least knows “a doctrine” besides ” god has sent us to Iraq”?

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  2. Adrian

    This comment is so unfair.

    Gibson himself did not really know what the Bush doctrine was. He gave a wrong description of it. Gibson even did not seem aware of the fact that Nato members have to defend attacked memberstates with militairy force.

    Come on. This is just a stupid media bias against a popular conservative candidate. And you know it is.

    And oh yeah: What about the extremely intelligent mister Biden who said yesterday that FDR was on television explaining the Wall Street crash in 1929 (TV had yet to be invented, Hoover was the president). Or this empty suit, the stuttering uhhh, uuhhh, uuuhhh, teleprompter user Obama who thinks that Iran is a tiny country and that the US consists of 57 states.

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