Nobody Knows Anything
Posted on September 12th, 2008
by Daniel Larison |
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This is getting out of hand. Andy McCarthy objects to reporting that Palin didn’t know what the Bush Doctrine was, making the ridiculous argument that this can’t be true because there are technical disputes among Bush supporters about how many policies the Bush Doctrine encompasses. In other words, despite Palin’s obvious ignorance of any part of the Doctrine, she must know what it is because many people who do know generally what it is disagree among themselves about its precise definition. According to her defenders, disagreements over the interpretation of an overarching foreign policy doctrine are no different from complete ignorance about the overarching foreign policy doctrine. This is like saying that someone who cannot give a rudimentary definition of what the Bill of Rights is knows just as much about it as the constitutional scholars who spend their lives arguing about the finer points of the equal protection clause.
Palin wasn’t “pressing” Gibson so that she could deliver her own nuanced take that she had pondered for a long time–it was as if she had never heard the phrase before, which is why she asked if Gibson meant Bush’s worldview. Palin knew what the word doctrine meant, but using it in a foreign policy context was clearly something she had not encountered before. I wish her apologists would just go back to saying that being from Alaska gives her foreign policy experience–at least that was amusing.
P.S. This interview reminded me earlier of the “pop quiz” that a reporter gave to then-Gov. Bush back in ‘99. Here was the priceless spin from his communications director at the time, Karen Hughes, when he couldn’t provide the answers:
The person who is running for president is seeking to be the leader of the free world, not a Jeopardy contestant.
How long before someone says something like this to justify Palin’s lack of knowledge?
Filed under: foreign policy, politics
I agree. Her deer in headlights pause followed by a “digging for a clue” question to Gibson proved she didn’t know what the Bush Doctrine was. I care less whether she knows what the Bush Doctrine is, and more whether she agrees or disagrees with it or not.
But that being said, I am still a bit surprised and still disappointed that our potential vice president isn’t up to speed with the current administration’s foreign policy nomenclature especially as it is within her own party. That only leads me to wonder what else she doesn’t know.
Will this lack of information and knowledge of other countries, and policies of past administrations hold her back from being fit for the executive job? Well, at least there is precedent for this sort of thing (see Bush, George W.).
The scary thing, Tom, is that the default position for her is to agree with it because it is the prevailing one in the GOP even before she knows what it is. By the time she finds out what it is, it will be too late for her to ponder whether it is a good idea.
‘But that being said, I am still a bit surprised and still disappointed that our potential vice president isn’t up to speed with the current administration’s foreign policy nomenclature especially as it is within her own party. ‘
What I find scary is that for wingnuts it doesn’t matter. They’ll like whoever they’re told is the person who shares their values. Anyone saying otherwise is someone they’ve been trained to ignore.
BTW Daniel you sound a lot like John Cole sounded about 2 years ago. That might explain why he likes this site and linked to it.You keep talking sense like this and before you know it you will be liberal’ed by the right wing media.
I don’t care too much about how she labels her thoughts on preemptive war, but I was pretty disappointed with her thoughts on the matter. It would help, however, if people were clear about what they mean. Charlie’s definition (”we have the right to a preemptive strike against any other country that we think is going to attack us”) was a definition of something obviously immoral. Palin says: “if there is legitimate and enough intelligence that tells us that a strike is imminent against American people, we have every right to defend our country.” That’s pretty mild: it certainly couldn’t be used to justify the Iraq war or a war with Iran.
I thought what she said about never second guessing Israel was much worse. We should second guess everybody, including ourselves, especially if they’re wielding force. And she stood by this response twice.
Actually, Palin’s ignorance, and those of her supporters, is probably grounds for intense optimism. The true definition of the Bush Doctrine–that America reserves the right to attack anyone, anywhere, who might conceivably pose a threat to us sometime in the future–apparently never occurred to her.
She naturally jumped to the idea of preemptive war, namely that we have the right to attack others when there’s credible evidence of an imminent attack. This is “preemptive war”, and it’s entirely non-controversial; it’s a long-established aspect of international law. (The Bush Doctrine is all about preventive war – easy to remember because “villainous” begins with “v.”)
There are a million wrong answers to “What is the Bush Doctrine,” but she chose to reassert the international status quo. This suggests that her moral instincts are much more sound than Bush’s. The fact that she felt so [i]righteous[/i] about it–that the right of [i]preemptive[/i] war is so obvious–indicates that she’d pause, at least momentarily, before accepting the doctrine of preventive war.
This is very small comfort, but after eight years I’ll take it where I can get it. I’m sure she’ll be brainwashed before too long. Mainly what I regret is that Gibson missed a “teachable moment” here, illustrating to the American people what the Bush Doctrine really means.
“How long before someone says something like this to justify Palin’s lack of knowledge?”
Fear not, Dan. At least one neocon, or rather neo-neocon (I assume that makes her twice as obnoxious), already has:
“After all the lady’s not running for chair of the Environmental Science Department of the University of Alaska.”