The Palin Floodgates Crack Open

Finally Sarah Palin takes questions from a guy! The guy in this case is Charlie Gibson, a journalist with roughly a quarter of the gravitas of Barbara Walters. Still, he is said by many to be fair and doesn't appear stupid. I guess. I rarely watch the nightly network newscasts, perhaps because judging by the commercials I'm about twenty years away from being their target audience. Boniva anyone?

This is all to say that even though I taped the news I didn't watch the segment. In fact, I watched an excerpt of the segment this morning, and they were using the excerpt to tease another segment tonight, which in turn is a tease for the 20/20 episode later tonight. I'm going to watch that. Its all a poor substitute for spending an hour with the candidate and just asking the questions yourself, but that would be impractical. I'm just too busy.

So, let's go straight to the "gotcha". (When I call it that, don't get me wrong - I don't think Gibson was trying to trip her up. The way he reacts, he seems more thrown off track than she was.)

GIBSON: Do you agree with the Bush doctrine?

PALIN: (beat) In what respect, Charlie?

GIBSON: The Bush — well, what do you — what do you interpret it to be?

PALIN: His world view?

GIBSON: No, the Bush doctrine, enunciated September 2002, before the Iraq war.

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. There have been blunders along the way, though. There have been mistakes made. And with new leadership, and that’s the beauty of American elections, of course, and democracy, is with new leadership comes opportunity to do things better.

GIBSON: (helpful but annoyed) 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?

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.

It's pretty obvious that Palin wasn't famliar with the phrase "Bush Doctrine." To be fair, that doesn't mean she isn't aware of the policy, in fact she surely is. I'm sure a lot of Men-In-The-Street aren't aware of the phrase either. So this exchange doesn't make me think she isn't prepared to lead.

However, it does suggest that she isn't ready to campaign. It reinforces the whole last-minute-hail-mary-VP-choice meme that we've been hearing since she was first announced. It says that Palin has been concentrating on running Alaska rather than following the national political scene. Since the most unpopular president we've ever had (if he ain't, he's pretty close) has made it a badge of honor that he doesn't complicate his thinking with too much information, I don't know how much patience the voters are going to have with Republicans offering up more of the same in Palin.

We've got a whole hour tonight to see how much of the rest of the interview is like this; and after that probably, a handful of interviews tops. And the debate. Of course, even if she winds up being Dan Quayle, remember that guy made it in.

Of course, Republican voters LIKED Bush Sr.