Charlie Gibson’s three-part interview (video) with Republican vice presidential candidate Gov. Sarah Palin last week scored big in the ratings, reports trade pub Broadcasting & Cable:
Charles Gibson’s interview … on Thursday’s World News elevated the broadcast to its most-watched installment since February.Â
World News was watched by 9.73 million people with a 2.5 rating/10 share in the 25-54 demographic, according to Nielsen Media Research fast affiliate data.Â
That was more than 2 million more viewers than NBC’s Nightly News (7.51 million viewers with a 2 rating/8 share in demo) and 3.57 million more viewers than CBS Evening News (6.15 million, 1.6/8).Â
The portion of the interview that created the most buzz was Gibson’s “gotcha†line of questioning on the Bush Doctrine that Palin gamely parried as she tried to figure out what, exactly, he was asking her to comment on until Gibson clarified his question with what turned out to be an incomplete explanation of the Bush Doctrine:
Gibson: Do you agree with the Bush doctrine? Â
Palin: In what respect, Charlie? Â
Gibson: The Bush – well, what do you – what do you interpret it to be? Â
Palin: His world view. Â
Gibson: No, the Bush doctrine, enunciated September 2002, before the Iraq war. Â
Palin: I believe that what President Bush has attempted to do is rid this world of Islamic extremism, terrorists who are hell bent on destroying our nation. …Â
Gibson: The Bush doctrine, as I understand it, is that we have the right of anticipatory self-defense, that we have the right to a preemptive strike against any other country that we think is going to attack us. Do you agree with that? Â
Palin: I agree that a president’s job, when they swear in their oath to uphold our Constitution, their top priority is to defend the United States of America. …Â
Gibson: Do we have a right to anticipatory self-defense? Do we have a right to make a preemptive strike again another country if we feel that country might strike us? Â
Palin: Charlie, 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. In fact, the president has the obligation, the duty to defend. …Â
Gibson: But, Governor, I’m asking you: We have the right, in your mind, to go across the border with or without the approval of the Pakistani government. Â
Palin: In order to stop Islamic extremists, those terrorists who would seek to destroy America and our allies, we must do whatever it takes and we must not blink, Charlie, in making those tough decisions of where we go and even who we target.
Gibson: And let me finish with this. I got lost in a blizzard of words there. Is that a yes? That you think we have the right to go across the border with or without the approval of the Pakistani government, to go after terrorists who are in the Waziristan area?
Palin: I believe that America has to exercise all options in order to stop the terrorists who are hell bent on destroying America and our allies. We have got to have all options out there on the table. Â
Funny, but Tom Brokaw had no trouble following Barack Obama’s stuttering, stammering responses to his questions on “Meet the Press†back in July and made no complaint about the torrent of words the candidate used to say not much of anything (second item). Is Gibson trying to say that Palin talks too much – like all women?
The double standard aside, The Wall Street Journal’s John Fund was among many who found Gibson’s questions “tough but largely fair,†except when “[h]e brought up the ‘Bush Doctrine’ without any explanation of its content and asked her what she thought of it.†But The Washington Post’s media critic Tom Shales noted that Gibson seemed to have undergone a personality change when conducting that first interview:
Usually likable and personable on-screen, Gibson seemed uncharacteristically pompous during part of the first interview … But in subsequent sessions with Palin, he was his old chummy self. …
Gibson sometimes appeared pretentious and imperial, and asked many questions in a low, grumbling mumble. With his glasses pushed down near the end of his nose, he looked like a professor questioning a student, trying to trip her up – which he did when he asked Palin whether she concurred with “the Bush doctrine.” …
Somewhat condescendingly, Gibson explained to Palin that the Bush doctrine has to do with “anticipatory defense” and the use of a “preemptive strike” against a potentially hostile power.
Amazingly, the most sympathetic reactions to Palin’s predicament over the Bush Doctrine came from Dem operatives and pundits not known to be favorably disposed towards conservatives. Case in point: Shales quotes James Carville as saying he’s “not surprised†that Palin didn’t know what the Bush Doctrine was – and in the context of Shales reporting, his comment wasn’t meant to disparage Palin. What Carville meant was that the Bush Doctrine has morphed so many times that no one knows what, exactly, it encompasses anymore.
WaPo columnist Dan Froomkin concedes, “I’m not sure anyone is entirely clear on what the Bush Doctrine is at this particular moment.†Froomkin quotes Jacob Weisberg, who enumerated six Bush Doctrines in his book “The Bush Tragedyâ€:
Bush Doctrine 1.0 was Unipolar Realism (3/7/99-9/10/01); Bush Doctrine 2.0 was With Us or Against Us (9/11/01-5/31/02); Bush Doctrine 3.0 was Preemption (6/1/02-11/5/03); Bush Doctrine 4.0 was Democracy in the Middle East (11/6/03-1/19/05); Bush Doctrine 5.0 was Freedom Everywhere (1/20/05- 11/7/06); and Bush Doctrine 6.0 (11/8/06 to date) is the “absence of any functioning doctrine at all.”
Weisberg’s analysis was borne out by the WaPo’s interviews with several foreign policy experts – a couple of whom actually had a hand in crafting at least one of the Bush Doctrines – on its various incarnations:
Intentionally or not, the Republican vice presidential nominee was on to something. After a brief exchange, Gibson explained that he was referring to the idea – enshrined in a September 2002 White House strategy document – that the United States may act militarily to counter a perceived threat emerging in another country. But that is just one version of a purported Bush doctrine advanced over the past eight years.
Peter D. Feaver, who worked on the Bush national security strategy as a staff member on the National Security Council, said he has counted as many as seven distinct Bush doctrines. They include the president’s second-term “freedom agendaâ€; the notion that states that harbor terrorists should be treated no differently than terrorists themselves; the willingness to use a “coalition of the willing” if the United Nations does not address threats; and the one Gibson was talking about – the doctrine of preemptive war. …
In an interview, Bush press secretary Dana Perino said that “the Bush doctrine is commonly used to describe key elements of the president’s overall strategy for dealing with threats from terrorists.” She laid out three elements:
“The United States makes no distinction between those who commit acts of terror and those who support and harbor terrorists. … We will confront grave threats before they fully materialize and will fight the terrorists abroad so we don’t have to face them at home. … We will counter the hateful ideology of the terrorist by promoting the hopeful alternative of human freedom.â€
You can compare those interpretations with Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice’s latest stab at an explanation, as well as this critique by Robert Kagan, former speechwriter for Secretary of State George P. Shultz and a foreign policy advisor to GOP presidential nominee Sen. John McCain.
As WaPo columnist Charles Krauthammer – who coined the term “Bush Doctrine†to describe the earliest manifestation of this amorphous set of principles notes:
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.
Based on this information, if you go back and re-read Palin’s answers, she was clearly  feeling her way through Gibson’s faulty premise to try to answer his question best she could – but not because she knew any less about the Bush Doctrine than her interviewer. Her first instinct to maneuver Gibson into being more specific was perfectly understandable, and her first answer to his first attempt at clarifying his inscrutable question - “his world view†– was actually dead-on.
Note: The Stiletto writes about politics and other stuff at The Stiletto Blog, chosen an Official Honoree in the Political Blogs category by the judges of the 12th Annual Webby Awards (the Oscars of the online universe) along with CNN Political Ticker, Swampland (Time magazine) and The Caucus (The New York Times).
15 users commented in " No One – Not Even Bush – Understands “The Bush Doctrine†"
Follow-up comment rss or Leave a TrackbackSo the real point is that to an idiot Sarah Palin seemed utterly clueless when asked about the Bush doctrine. To a knowledgeable person however she was spot on.
In a video shown extensively on the net. John McCain on the other hand has been entirely clear what the Bush doctrine was all about and didn’t find it at all difficult or inscrutable.
What does that make him?
The question was flawed, and Palin did what anyone would do in that situation – she tried to pin the interviewer down so she could determine the best answer to the question. If you think of this as a job interivew writ large, you never want to answer the question you weren’t asked or to volunteer information that might lead the interviewer down a path that is distracting or tangential because then when your allotted time is up you wasted a huge chunk of it on irrelevancies rather than on selling yourself and closing the deal.
Please answer question as to how John MCCain could explain Bush doctrine with ease Mr Stilleto.
Or is it Mr Hans Christian Andersen?
Stiletto,
I woudld disagree with the point of your article. This was a textbook softball question.
Palin could have done anything to answer it anyway way She wanted.
She seemed to get a free pass on this question from the so-called liberal media.
If Biden had the same lame answer as Palin, you know he’d be fried at the steak.
And I doubt you would be defending him.
Joe, Rich: The Stiletto’s point is no one could have answered that question because it has become manifestly clear after 8 years, that GWB (and/or Cheney) has been making it up as he goes along. That’s why even Bush doesn’t know anymore what he heck he is trying to accomplish with his crazy, mixed-up foreign policy. However, it appears (NYT, WaPo) that observers are now coming to the realization that in his waning days in office the steps Bush is taking are becoming indistinguisable from those Obama has been proposing.
“Foreign Policy Doctrines” have ranged from specific to nebulous as is well explained in this Wickapedia explanation
“Foreign policy of Doctrine
In matters of foreign policy, a doctrine, also known as dogma, is a body of axioms fundamental to the exercise of a nation’s foreign policy. Hence, doctrine, in this sense, has come to suggest a broad consistency that holds true across a spectrum of acts and actions. Doctrines of this sort are almost always presented as the personal creations of one particular political leader, whom they are named after. Examples include the Monroe Doctrine, the Stimson Doctrine, the Truman Doctrine, the Eisenhower Doctrine, the Nixon Doctrine, the Brezhnev Doctrine, the Kirkpatrick doctrine, the Bush Doctrine.
Mirriam Webster – a principle or position or the body of principles in a branch of knowledge or system of belief, a statement of fundamental government policy especially in international relations e: a military principle or set of strategies
So without being specific, Charlie’s question was pretty lame if he expected a specific answer. It was truly a baited question targeted at confusing and confounding Palin to create news.
David: The links in this post certainly bears this out – and Charles Krauthammer also doesn’t think that “doctrines” are “doctrinaire” and that they must shape-shift as geopolitical realities change. Be that as it may, the Bush Doctrine seems a particularly Rube Goldberg invention.
Stilletto,
Equating the Bush Doctrine to a Rube Goldberg invention leads me to believe that you do not take this type of foreign policy doctrine seriously.
Your arguements further justify my previous post Charlie Gibson’s question was not specific leaving Palin to answer anyway she wanted, for, against, not answer directly.
Her initial response showed that she was clueless, probing Gibson to describe what the Bush Doctrine was.
Maybe if She was honest and stated she did not know what the Doctine was it would justify her as not being a Bush clone like McCain.
The main elements of the Bush Doctrine were delineated in a National Security Council document, the National Security Strategy of the United States, published on September 20, 2002.[17] This document is often cited as the definitive statement of the doctrine.[18][19][20] It was updated in 2006 and is stated as follows: [21]
“ It is an enduring American principle that this duty obligates the government to anticipate and counter threats, using all elements of national power, before the threats can do grave damage. The greater the threat, the greater is the risk of inaction – and the more compelling the case for taking anticipatory action to defend ourselves, even if uncertainty remains as to the time and place of the enemy’s attack. There are few greater threats than a terrorist attack with WMD. To forestall or prevent such hostile acts by our adversaries, the United States will, if necessary, act preemptively in exercising our inherent right of self-defense.
17.^ National Security Strategy of the United States, 2006
18.^ Editorial (2003-04-13). “Aftermath; The Bush Doctrine”, New York Times.
19.^ Editorial (2002-09-22). “The Bush Doctrine”, New York Times.
20.^ Gitlin, Todd (January/February 2003). “America’s Age of Empire: The Bush Doctrine”, Mother Jones. Retrieved on 2008-09-12
21.^ U.S. National Security Strategy 2006
Where is everyone when Oduma forgot Russia had Veto? Come on, do you honestly expect anyone with half a brain would elect a Freshmen to be President……How many times does he have to change his stance on basic issues…oh wait! it happens every time a poll changes. He is too far left.
Happy Democrat not giving my vote to Obama.
Oh and don’t think I forgot that it was Clinton admin. 1992 that started the weak regulations on housing loans to Freddie and Fannie. His heart was in the right place to make sure anyone could get a loan, but sadly bad people started the “liar loans” 1998 and the rest is history.
yes Bush should have pushed congress to tighten these laws after Enron. I don’t know why he didn’t have the balls to.
McCain has the nut sack to just rip the band aid right off America’s bad economy and then dress the wound properly.
If a President had enough power to turn the economy around why hasn’t it been done yet?
Bush and McCain have the same ol lobbyist buddies at the cocktail parties. In fact they are riding in the back of McCains campaign bus as advisors.
McCains nut sack has been bought and sold more times over then a 65 year old prostitute.
Rich:
If you click on the links embedded in the post and read all the articles you will see that the Bush Doctrine is not any one thing – and it’s certainly not what Charlie Gibson said it was. Or, at least, it was what he said for about a year or so before it morphed into something else. There is no Bush Doctrine per se. It is an evolving work in progress and Charlie Gibson’s question made no sense.
One of the people bringing Palin up to speed on Bush’s foreign policy and McCain’s plans on what to keep and what to toss was involved in formulating one of the Bush Doctrines. You don’t think he gave Palin the full monty and explained all the permutations of the Bush Doctrine? Of course he did.
Man, Rich is on it and The Shoe-you don’t have a chance or a clue! Rich should be the one writing the articles on these blogs he is educated and holds knowledge regarding the subject while the Shoe(opps, The Stiletto) just copies and paste others words!
Let’s agree to disagree on this.
Blaming Gibson and questioning the widely held views of the Bush Doctrine (as varied as it arguably is) as well as many other Presidential Doctrines can be a topic of questions posed.
I still strongly believe that it was an open ended question and Sarah Palin frankly did not know what the Bush Doctrine was.
I think many are blaming Gibson’s question frankly as a cop out excuse to give Sarah Palin a free pass on not knowing what the Bush Doctrine is.
I give the Vice Presidential position (a number two spot of the Country) more seriousness then this. Someone should at least ask her the same question again and see if she was schooled by her campaign on what the Bush Dotrine is.
She has been avoiding the Press not answering any questions on her campaign trail, that in itself is disturbing.
With a limited time till elections the media should have more access to her an ask questions especially since she’s a relatively unknown in politics.
Truth,
For the record I like Stiletto although we may disagree at times, it’s all good.
Although her and I, and others may disagree, the other readers may be enlightend along the way. This is the beauty of blogging!
It is all good Rich, just having some fun with the name and well the article is mostly copy&paste… But, you do know a whole hell of lot more than the blog writer-so that is TRUTH! You do enlighten (nicer word than educate- but the same) us all ~so cheers to U!
Sorry shoe, I’ll be nice to ya(but ya did get enlightened)
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