Reporters and commentators - for example, David Gergen on CNN last night - are falling all over themselves in an attempt to be fair about Sarah Palin's blank response to Charlie Gibson's question about the Bush Doctrine. Not just Sarah Palin has no knowledge of the Bush doctrine - so too do many reporters not know what it is.
And what relevance does the lack of knowledge of reporters or any Americans who are not candidates for Vice President have to Sarah Palin's ignorance on this important foreign policy issue? A Republican Vice Presidential candidate no less, who, if elected, will be serving under a Republican President even more gung-ho than Bush. Her ignorance of this doctrine - the view that the U.S. is entitled to take preemptive actions and start wars in response to perceived threats, just as we did in Iraq - seems pretty crucial at this juncture of our history.
Socrates and Plato criticized democracy on this very point: that an ignorant opinion in the mouth of a popular person can have more weight than an accurate view presented by an unpopular person.
Sarah Palin is popular among many Americans these days, no doubt. But does the fact that x number of Washington reporters do not know what the Bush doctrine is mean that we want this absence of knowledge in someone just a heartbeat away from a 72-year old President?
Wake up, David Gergen and political commentators - what's at stake here has nothing to do with your lack of knowledge.
2 comments:
Paul: Very well put. When is someone going to stand up and YELL: the Emperor has no clothes.
Imagine having to have emergency surgery and instead of an experienced surgeon the hospital assigns a dermatologist with 18 months of experience to perform the life threatening procedure.
We need to wake up from the last two-weeks of Sister Sarah Dreamland and face hard reality. This is not a pretty picture.
We have a Potential Debacle on our hands. With climate change (global warming) the experts say we are reaching a tipping point -- i.e., if we don't do something about it NOW we may not be able to reverse the trend. I see parallels to this with the upcoming election. We are at a tipping point as a nation. We have squandered our valuable resources in mindless Bush Doctrine policies and initiatives over the past 8 years. We have been in decline for the past decade. This country needs to rebuild its infrastructure, talent pool, economic model, and political agendas. We have fallen HARD and need to get up before it's too late -- if not for you and me (the baby boom crowd) then for our kids and grandkids. Investment in America and a vision of the future is what's needed to stem the tide of this impending tipping point. You tell me which candidate is most WILLING, CAPABLE and QUALIFIED to lead that charge?
/jimy_max
Sarah Palin barely survived the interview with Charlie Gibson.
1) Sarah shares an "I don't blink" compulsive disorder with George W. Bush. Ms. Palin told Charlie that she didn't blink when John McCain asked her to run with him three weeks ago. Talk about decisive. She accepted instantly, she didn't blink, she didn't hesitate, she didn't ask any of her kids if they were pregnant.
2) Sister Sarah seemed stumped and gave a 5-second blank stare when asked about the Bush Doctrine. It states that just because the weapons of mass destruction were never found it doesn't mean that they couldn't have killed us. But seriously ... the caribou called and they want their "deer in the headlights" look back.
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