GOP’s Latest Defense of Palin: There is No Bush Doctrine!

Late Friday, some 24 hours after the release of Gibson’s first interview with Palin, Team McCain and his surrogates began to roll out a contrived explanation for why Palin was clueless about the Bush Doctrine in her ABC interview.  That is, there is no Bush Doctrine!  For the reasons below, don’t buy it.

I smelled the talking point onslaught coming Friday evening (9/12) when Soren Dayton, the former McCain aide who was “suspended” from the campaign because he circulated a racist video about Obama, Tweeted about his new post on the conservative Next Right blog. In his post, Dayton argues there is “no Bush Doctrine” (or alternatively, several definitions for it).  Dayton’s evidence?  A lunch time conversation with his fellow travelers who all seemed to have different definitions for the doctrine.  (I look forward to Dayton’s future posts boldly asserting the world is flat and Martians throw tighter spirals than American quarterbacks based on his lunch time chats.)

How could poor Sarah Palin answer a question that has a false premise, the argument goes.  She was tricked by the dastardly media again!

Lo and behold, staunch neocon columnist Charles Krauthammer’s Saturday column is published online Friday evening by the Washington Post repeating the same argument in defense of Palin (adding that it was Gibson, not Palin, that made a “gaffe”).  Playing the old Annie Hall “Marshall McLuhan” bit, he contends that he is the author of the phrase “Bush Doctrine” so he should know that there’s more than one definition for it.  He then concludes with this gratuitous zinger revealing he’s in full spin mode:  any assertion that Palin was clueless about the Bush Doctrine on Palin is an elitist attack on her as a mother of five children.  (And by this logic, any GOP attack on Nancy Pelosi is an attack on her as a mother and grandmother).

This is the same Charles Krauthammer who first reacted with horror to the selection of Sarah Palin, not just once, but twice. Apparently Krauthammer’s brief window of intellectual integrity was slammed shut by his greater political cause of electing McCain.

Adding momentum to the meme, the “no Bush Doctrine” talking point was then echoed in this front page story in Saturday’s Washington Post, which is also being syndicated by MSNBC.  In it, several Bush administration veterans and other GOP surrogates faithfully reiterate the new talking point (perhaps Dayton’s lunch was a table for 20).

As Chuck Todd likes to say, it’s shiny object time.  In fact, this revisionist GOP explanation doesn’t hold up.  But it does fit the broader GOP identity politics-narrative of a victimized Palin.  And it gives a colorable explanation for her poor performance to the GOP base, which is all it needs to give her a pass.

Let’s take a closer look:

Charles Gibson asked her if she “agreed with the Bush Doctrine.”  After a long pause, Palin replied with “In what respect, Charlie?“

If Krauthammer and Dayton are correct that anyone paying attention to Bush’s foreign policy would know there’s no (or at least several) Bush Doctrine(s), then an aspiring V.P. like Palin should have taken this into account in her answer.  She should have challenged the premise of the question, “Sorry Charlie, but everyone knows there is no Bush doctrine.” Or sought clarification, “Look Charlie, there’s more than one definition, so which one do you mean?”

But she didn’t.

Let’s give her the benefit of the doubt.  Let’s assume by “In what respect, Charlie?” she meant, “Which doctrine, Charlie?” (I took her answer as, “I have no clue what you’re talking about, Charlie,” but I’m trying to be fair).

Gibson then went out of his way to give her that chance to clarify when he said, “What do you interpret it to be?” If there was any confusion in the question, here was a softball for her.

Looking extremely uncomfortable, she gave a fluffy, B.S. answer that to her the doctrine means Bush’s “worldview.” She then made an abrupt detour to what a wonderful thing democratic elections are.  She sounded like the high school student who gets called on in class unexpectedly and stutters out some nonsense in the hopes she can disguise her unpreparedness, instead of admitting she doesn’t know.  Teachers see through it, and so did ABC’s viewers.

But Gibson next eliminated any possible uncertainty about “which doctrine” he was referring to when he defined it for her, and gave her another chance to respond.

Her answer was a nonsequitor.  She spoke of the country’s right to defend itself against terrorism.

Self-defense against terrorism has nothing to do with preemptive war (or “anticipatory self-defense”, to use Gibson’s term).  Plain old self-defense, like the invasion of Afghanistan in immediate response to the 9/11 attacks, has always been a basis for war.  The Bush Doctrine, as Gibson said, was announced by Bush in September 2002 before the Iraq War (after Afghanistan).

This wasn’t a “gotcha” question about some obscure point.  The Bush Doctrine marked a fundamental policy shift in modern American foreign policy.  The same question was asked of McCain in at least two televised settings, including once by Charles Gibson.

Check out the video below. Ignore the audible heartbeat that someone added for dramatic effect.  Focus on the fact that Charles Gibson asks John McCain the same question during a GOP primary debate on ABC.  McCain doesn’t squirm uncomfortably. Nor does he attack the premise of the question (as Krauthammer and Dayton insist any knowledgeable person would).

Rather, without blinking, McCain says he agrees with the Bush Doctrine.  It’s also pretty clear from McCain’s response that he understands the doctrine to have the same definition that Gibson used.

The video also reminds us that a voter asked McCain the same question on CNN, and the voter clearly understood it to have the same meaning that Gibson ascribed to it.  Again, it’s hardly an obscure issue when Joe Voter offers the question.

So why the sudden revisionist fuss about there being “no Bush Doctrine”?  Because it’s shiny object time.  And because McCain, his surrogates and the neocon acolytes would rather lose their integrity than lose an election.

Here’s Bush and McCain clearly articulating the Bush Doctrine: