Posted by
Andrew Roman on Friday, September 12, 2008 11:58:32 PM
Charles Gibson, foot-swinging ABC News “gotcha” merchant, looked like someone poured castor oil in his Cheerio bowl just prior to his interview with Governor Sarah Palin. He had a scowl on his kisser that would’ve made WC Fields envious, all the while masterfully balancing those professorial eyeglasses on the end of his nose like a seasoned circus performer handles the tightrope. In retrospect, he probably should have – and certainly could have - been a smidgen more specific when grilling Governor Palin about the Bush Doctrine.
Still, the onus was squarely on the Governor of the great state of Alaska to answer the coming questions without vacillation. After all, this was the big stage. The world was watching. It was time for the rifle-toting hockey mom to play with the big boys.
And so it was that they sat face to face, the taste of stale Cheerios on Gibson’s tongue (I’m guessing), the Republican Vice-Presidential nominee squared and ready, anxious to field queries from the grimacing Gibson. It was to be the next finest hour of Sarah Palin.
Yet, within a few minutes, something had gone horribly wrong. Unforeseen hesitation had reared its ugly head. Inside of a few brief moments, it was hanging out there like a giant matzo ball – the dreaded Bush Doctrine.
How could Governor Sarah Palin not know what Charles Gibson meant when asked about it?
What on earth was wrong with the woman?
I’m willing to concede that she was, perhaps, a little confused.
Did Charles Gibson mean the Bush Doctrine of preventive war, as he defined it with Governor Palin, or did he mean the Bush Doctrine as he expressed it on September 21, 2001 in which he said the United States planned to follow through on its “promise that all terrorist organizations with global reach will be found, stopped and defeated?”
Gibson may have been alluding to the Bush Doctrine that New York Times columnist Frank Rich declared dead on April 13, 2002, almost seven months after Gibson defined it – not to be confused with the new Bush Doctrine as depicted in Richard Falk’s article on June 27, 2002 in The Nation in which he writes that President Bush was “repudiating the core idea of the United Nations charter.” Evidently, these were only precursors to Michael Kingsley’s March, 2003 perception of the Bush Doctrine in which the President started “a war without anyone’s permission.”
In Palin’s defense, it is possible (and maybe even likely) that she was thinking of Robin Wright of the Washington Post who claimed in June, 2004 the Bush Doctrine not yet dead, but “severely eroding” due to the occupation of Iraq. According to Wright, only one of four tenets of the doctrine still survived by “a sliver” – namely, the hope of spreading democracy. All other tenets were, in fact, finished. This contrasts with the explanation of the Boston Globe’s Jeff Jacoby who in January of this year, like Frank Rich nearly six years earlier, declared the Bush Doctrine completely dead – only five months before deciding it was actually still alive, saying it was almost dead except for the single exception of Iraq. The doctrine, according to Jacoby, was identified as “not permitting the world’s most dangerous regimes to threaten us with the world’s most destructive weapons.” Add to this the Brookings Institute’s Phillip H Gordon’s tenets of the Bush Doctrine, as explained on December 1, 2006, in which America was, first, engaged in a “war against evil” and second, calling upon other nations to decide if they were for or against us. Gordon, in his recitation, wasn’t ready to say the doctrine was dead, only that he wondered about it.
I believe that most will concur that if Gibson had simply told Governor Palin he was referencing the Bush Doctrine as understood by Peter Jennings and Claire Shipman on September 20, 2001, which is not unlike George Will’s interpretation of December 9, 2001, holding that “anyone who governs a territory is complicit in any terrorism that issues from that territory,” (which was essentially the same as Gibson’s own September, 2001 definition) then the entire interview might have taken a different turn. However, it isn’t out of the question to conclude that Palin probably hit a cognitive bump while recalling that George Will’s Bush Doctrine of May, 2006 was an expanded variation, which included the spread of democracy – not unlike like Robin Wright’s was two years earlier.
It is here that Palin disappoints.
Sure, the Bush Doctrine may have “rung hollow” in the eyes of the Cato Institute’s Charles Pena in January, 2003, but it shouldn’t have kept Palin from “Understanding the Bush Doctrine,” as articulated by Noam Chomsky in October, 2004. Furthermore, her inability to summon the characterization of the Bush Doctrine as articulated by William Marina and David T. Bielo of the Independent Institute on December 9, 2004, both of whom explain that the Doctrine was actually fathered by Teddy Roosevelt a century earlier – a “pre-emptive imperialism,” as they described it – speaks volumes of Governor Palin’s inexperience.
It may actually be this century-old pre-emptive version of the Bush Doctrine, implemented decades before his birth, which Gibson spoke of in his interview with Sarah Palin.
And this woman wants to be Vice President?
Andrew Roman, Brooklyn, NY