Dayhoff Soundtrack: Charlie Gibson's Gaffe By Charles Krauthammer

Tuesday, September 23, 2008

Charlie Gibson's Gaffe By Charles Krauthammer

Charlie Gibson's Gaffe By Charles Krauthammer

For whatever reason, the matter of the “Bush Doctrine” continues to resurface in conversations about the gotcha Charles Gibson interview with Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin almost two week’s ago.

Of course, had Mr. Gibson been interviewing Illinois Sen. Barack Obama or Delaware Sen. Joe Biden, we could be certain that his tone and mood would have been considerably less arrogant and condescending.

Let’s face it; Gov. Palin does not come from the elite ranks of Washington, the East Coast or New York. She’s actually someone to which many of us can relate. The elite media and many Democrats have come unglued that a PTA Mom from a small town in Alaska could possibly – gasp – become vice president.

On September 13, Charles Krauthammer weighed into the fray:

Charlie Gibson's Gaffe By Charles Krauthammer

Saturday, September 13, 2008; A17

"At times visibly nervous . . . Ms. Palin most visibly stumbled when she was asked by Mr. Gibson if she agreed with the Bush doctrine. Ms. Palin did not seem to know what he was talking about. Mr. Gibson, sounding like an impatient teacher, informed her that it meant the right of 'anticipatory self-defense.' " -- New York Times, Sept. 12

Informed her? Rubbish.

The New York Times got it wrong. And Charlie Gibson got it wrong.

There is no single meaning of the Bush doctrine. In fact, there have been four distinct meanings, each one succeeding another over the eight years of this administration -- and the one Charlie Gibson cited is not the one in common usage today. It is utterly different.

He asked Palin, "Do you agree with the Bush doctrine?"

She responded, quite sensibly to a question that is ambiguous, "In what respect, Charlie?"

Sensing his "gotcha" moment, Gibson refused to tell her. After making her fish for the answer, Gibson grudgingly explained to the moose-hunting rube that the Bush doctrine "is that we have the right of anticipatory self-defense."

Wrong.

I know something about the subject because, as the Wikipedia entry on the Bush doctrine notes, I was the first to use the term. In the cover essay of the June 4, 2001, issue of the Weekly Standard entitled, "The Bush Doctrine: ABM, Kyoto, and the New American Unilateralism," I suggested that the Bush administration policies of unilaterally withdrawing from the ABM treaty and rejecting the Kyoto protocol, together with others, amounted to a radical change in foreign policy that should be called the Bush doctrine.

[…]

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.

Yes, Sarah Palin didn't know what it is. But neither does Charlie Gibson. And at least she didn't pretend to know -- while he looked down his nose and over his glasses with weary disdain, sighing and "sounding like an impatient teacher," as the Times noted. In doing so, he captured perfectly the establishment snobbery and intellectual condescension that has characterized the chattering classes' reaction to the mother of five who presumes to play on their stage.