It does seem as if now Charlie Gibson re-invented the BUSH doctrine. No wonder Palin wanted him to be more direct in his question. Check this out... Overall I thought the interview was excellant. SARAH PALIN showed she is NO SLOUCH! Her answers were sharp clear & concise. The only smuggness I saw was in Gibson. I never knew he was such a pompous arse...but then again, so was O'Rielly with OBAMA. I thought of BOTH interviews that she did much better than OBAMA.

What say you???

Charlie Gibson's Gaffe

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Then came 9/11, and that notion was immediately superseded by the advent of the war on terror.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.

I'm not so concerned with her not knowing that unfortunate policy, but rather with her governing style in Alaska and her ultra-conservative positions on many issues.

I mean, war with Russia over Georgia? Al Qaeda 9/11 ties to Iraq? Scary.

Well these are things we have to deal with...like it or not. I think bigger countries get like bullies when they think they are going to deal with DEMS. They just don't pull the same crap on REPS because they know we won't put up with it. Not everything has to be handled aggressively to win.

I really hope that McCain is sincere in pulling out the best of BOTH parties & creating SENSIBLE govt. that everyone can benefit from. I really mean that. I have nothing against OBAMA...he seems like a nice man. I just don't agree with his "politics."

We can ALL Take some lessons from R. Reagan.

I'm looking forward to "interview" #2 this week and watching starstruck Sean Hannity hump Sarah's leg like a horny little puppy.

That's disgusting. Now your equating REPS with the disgusting behaviors of libs. Shame on YOU!

I was going to throw a Larry Craig reference in, but I held back...

Oh R U bad...

I am bad, but Hannity's "interview" will be nothing but a Obama bashing McCain commercial. John McCain should actually pop in for a cameo at the end to smile, wink at the camera and say, "I'm John McCain and I approve this message. Thanks Sean."

yes well I notice that DEMS will not come on FOX because they know they will get tough questions that the other lib media won't ask.

FOX IS the only fair & balanced news network around dude...face it!

Obama was just on Bill-0... Let's see Palin go on with Matthews or Olberman.

Isn't it funny how suddenly THERE IS NO BUSH DOCTRINE???!!! Bush was proudly put on a pedestal for his "doctrine". He states he gives not one hoot about how his employers, us, feel about what he does in office and the right says he is a maverick, strong, excuse me I am laughing so hard I cannot see the screen here.......hold on a minute......... okay, and NOW the right says he has not got one??!!!

I can only wish that the enlightened of us can see all of this before it is too late, again.

Palin was on with Gibson... he was arrogant but she held her own very well.

Are you really comparing the mild mannered, though condescending Gibson, with the blustery Bill Orally?

You are so partisan...you really have trouble with the concept of fair & balanced...don't you?

WOW!

Why is is that every night Sean Hannity rails against "Barack Hussein Obama?" Does he balance Orally's left bent?

My point is that compared to the overall network coverage FOX is more fair & balanced than the rest. Come on...Mathews & Oberlmann are orgamsing over OBAMA...for 17 mths!!!!! CNN is just as bad as the rest of them. These networks should start handing out barf bags BEFORE they interview him. GEEZ!!! LOL

Reality check!

Only from your unbalanced perspective is Faux "balanced."

Yup, fair and balanced if you are a white supremist. Fair and balanced if you hate so much you cannot see past the nose on your face. Fair and balanced if you believe the spin doctors who have lead this country down the toilet. Fair and balanced if you need that added boost of superiority over others to make you fell worth something.

But if you are an intelligent, enlightened, tolerant and human value having individual then there is NO fair and balanced for you on fox.

I watch the BBC news on pbs lol

Since the odds are stacked against REPS in the media I'd say it's you who are the deceiver.

People know it too. They aren't listening to DEMS but they ARE listening to McCain/Palin!!!

You want everyone to believe that the fanantical left wing bias is the norm...guess again!