Friday, September 12, 2008

Palin's interview

I'm not inclined to take too much meaning out of much of anything she said. Lots of people are all over her for repeating the "second guess" line about Israel over and over and about whether Georgia really should be part of NATO. These things don't worry me too much. I realize she's required to walk a very fine line, for her answers to comply with the messages the campaign wants to put out. Even if she knew lots about the issues, she'd be trying to keep her answers limited to the memorized blurbs provided by the campaign.

But her obvious failure to know what The Bush Doctrine is does worry me, and it confirms my suspicion from the beginning. She's never had much interest in national or international issues. Any one who's been paying even the slightest attention to the U.S. foreign policy over the past eight years knows what The Bush Doctrine is, maybe not with precision (there's some room for varying interpretations of what exactly it is), but enough to not be completely adrift at the question.

[Update: McCain himself makes my point:

2 comments:

love johnson said...

I was watching the talking heads last night (CNN and Fox) to see what they said about the interview. I was struck that the Reps of course said it was great and they all said that it was no big deal that she "might" not have known what the Bush Doctrine was - that they didn't know what it was and that most people didn't know. I thought that was quite a stretch. The Dems said perhaps citizens didn't know what it was, but certainly someone who was running for VP should know.

The other thing I found interesting was that on CNN, Anderson Cooper asked the Rep person(Bay Buchanan) and the Dem person (someone I didn't know) a reverse question - did Bay see anything negative re: Palin during the interview and did the Dem see anything positive. Dem said yes, her position about military action inside Pakistan without their approval. Of course, he threw in there that that was Obama's postion a year ago, so it was nice to see her agree with Obama. Bay, predictably, said she saw/heard NOTHING remotely negative - she was great and spot-on with everything.

Michael said...

oh snap. Well, his mother is 95+ QED