No Flash

By Kleinheider Posted on September 12, 2008 at 9:30 am

James Fallows on Sarah Palin’s ignorance of the Bush Doctrine:

What Sarah Palin revealed is that she has not been interested enough in world affairs to become minimally conversant with the issues. Many people in our great land might have difficulty defining the “Bush Doctrine” exactly. But not to recognize the name, as obviously was the case for Palin, indicates not a failure of last-minute cramming but a lack of attention to any foreign-policy discussion whatsoever in the last seven years.

Two details in Charles Gibson’s posing of the question were particularly telling. One was the potentially confusing way in which he first asked it. On the page, “the Bush Doctrine” looks different from “the Bush doctrine.” But when hearing the question Palin might not have known whether Gibson was referring to the general sweep of Administration policy — doctrine with small d — or the rationale that connected 9/11 with the need to invade Iraq, the capital-D Doctrine. So initial confusion would be understandable — as if a sports host asked about Favre’s chances and you weren’t sure if he meant previously with the Packers or with the Jets. Once Gibson clarified the question, a person familiar with the issue would have said, “Oh, if we’re talking about the strategy that the President and Condoleezza Rice began laying out in 2002….”  There was no such flash of recognition.

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Tags: Bush Doctrine, Ignorance, Sarah Palin