Piling On Palin
By INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY | Posted Monday, September 15, 2008 4:20 PM PT
Election '08: ABC's Charles Gibson does his best to prove that Gov. Sarah Palin is unqualified to be vice president. But there's no entrance exam for veep. Is she qualified? Barack Obama seems to think so.
In the best tradition of "gotcha" journalism, Gibson asked Palin in a one-on-one interview last week, "Do you agree with the Bush Doctrine?" Palin, aware of its many definitions and potential applications, replied, "In what respect, Charlie?" She was not "confused" as some have reported. She was asking for clarification of a patronizing and classically dumb question.
There are various definitions of the "Bush Doctrine" which, unlike the Monroe Doctrine, is not written down and is open to interpretation. Columnist Charles Krauthammer, who first coined the phrase, says he would define it as Bush's post 9/11 aim of fighting terror by draining the swamp and replacing tyranny with democracy.
Gibson then seemed to scold her like a professor lecturing a student, saying it meant "anticipatory self-defense" or pre-emption in a tone he would not use on Biden or Obama.
We prefer to think it means, as President Reagan so eloquently put it, "We win. They lose."
However defined, it is infinitely better, and safer than the Obama Doctrine: "Can we talk?"
Palin's was a perfectly sensible response reminiscent of the time Margaret Thatcher, no dummy herself, appeared on C-Span's Book-notes to talk about her book, "The Downing Street Years." "What do you think of the future?" host Brian Lamb asked the Iron Lady, to which Thatcher responded, "The future of what?"
The GOP has long been said to be looking for the next Reagan. Instead, it may have found the next Thatcher. In this ambush interview, Palin once again showed the former point guard for the Wasilla Warriors can hold her own in the paint and score.
Palin supports the admission of Georgia and Ukraine into NATO, which prompted Gibson to breathlessly ask: "And under the NATO treaty, wouldn't we then have to go to war if Russia went into Georgia?" Yes, Charlie, that's what Article 5 says, even under a President Obama. The whole idea of NATO is collective security to deter any attack.
"The agreement when you are a NATO ally is if another country is attacked, you're going to be expected to be called upon and help." This was a better answer than Obama's initial reaction to Moscow's aggression that both sides go to a neutral corner, as if both were at fault.
Their continued attack on Palin's bona fides after being mayor and governor contrasts sharply to the media's blind acceptance of Obama's prior "experience" as a community organizer.
Even Obama admitted in his book, "Dreams From My Father": "When classmates in college asked me just what it was that a community organizer did, I couldn't answer them directly." He'd also be hard-pressed to explain what he accomplished in that role. But don't expect the media to press him.
At a forum last week on national service, Obama was asked if Democrats, in going after Palin's qualifications to be vice president, have belittled the service small-town mayors perform every day.
"We've had an awful lot of small-town mayors at the Democratic Convention, I assure you," Obama said. "I meet them all the time. The mayors have some of the toughest jobs in the country because that's where the rubber hits the road. You know, we yak in the Senate; they actually have to fill potholes and trim trees and make sure the garbage is taken away."
Sort of like being a community organizer, only with actual responsibilities. |
