Tim e-mails me from Penn State with a couple of questions about the ABC news interview of Sarah Palin by Charles Gibson and asks for my thoughts. He writes:
It's difficult to blame her for looking uncomfortable in the face of Gibson's questioning, but I felt the interview highlighted her utter lack of foreign policy experience. She said she's never met a foreign leader and that she's traveled very little outside of the United States. She said Alaska's proximity to Russia gives her insight into the current situation in Georgia. More troubling was the fact that she'd never heard of the Bush Doctrine, which could very well become a central part of our next president's foreign policy, given our current relationship with the Islamic world.
Just a few weeks ago Republicans were saying a lack of experience is a fatal flaw. Why the sudden turnaround?
Three times Palin refused to answer whether our troops should cross the Pakistani border without approval from their government. She talked her way around the question and never gave a straight answer. Her lack of decisiveness was disturbing. Is this what we want from a woman who could soon become our next leader in the war on terror?
A vice presidential pick is not simply a political weapon used to "energize" a voting bloc. A vice president should be able to step in at a moment's notice as leader of the United States. Do you believe she's ready?
Here's the crux of my reply edited somewhat:
Good to hear from you and to read your thoughts on the Palin interview. You asked at the end if I thought Palin had enough foreign policy experience to be ready. I think the best way to answer that is to say that I think she's at least as ready as Senator Obama. Until he won his party's nomination he had no foreign policy (FP) experience either, and all that he's gotten since then came on his recent trip during which he met with several foreign leaders. I think that to the extent that a lack of FP experience is problematic it's much more problematic for the head of the ticket than for the veep.
Having said that, though, I'm not real impressed by the FP qualification. Unless they have first served as a vice-president most people who become president have very little FP experience until they get to the White House. They have usually been governors, and governors don't deal with FP. Nor do most senators. Probably the only two presidents since the 1930s who had any real prior FP experience before becoming Commander-in-Chief were Eisenhower, who was our commander in Europe during WWII, perhaps Nixon who was Ike's VP, and the first Bush who was head of the CIA for a while and a vice-president. Truman and LBJ were vice-presidents but neither had much FP responsibility in that role. FDR, Carter, Reagan, Clinton and the current Bush were all governors. JFK was a senator.
So I don't hold a lack of that particular kind of experience against either Obama or Palin.
Nor am I troubled that Palin didn't know what Gibson meant by the Bush doctrine (BD). It was a "gotcha" question that her opponents will make a lot of hay over but which is really kind of silly. For one reason, the BD is not a formal doctrine but a name given by the media to a set of policies. As such it has gone through a number of revisions in the last eight years, and what Gibson said the doctrine is is not the whole story. In its current incarnation, the "doctrine" is the policy of spreading freedom and democracy around the world. Gibson said that it was the policy of preemptive war, but actually it's both of those, and Palin should be given some slack for not knowing exactly what he meant or how to respond to his question.
As for the Pakistan question, she was wise not to give a definite answer. That was another rhetorical trap that Gibson had laid for her. If she said we should not go into Pakistan then her answer would be used to discredit both Bush and McCain since we are, in fact, sending troops surreptitiously across the border, and McCain, I think, supports that (So does Obama, btw). If she had said that we should go in then she would be criticized for embarrassing our "allies" in Islamabad who must keep up the pretense, for domestic reasons, of being outraged that their territorial sovereignty is being violated by American incursions. By answering Gibson's question she would have either embarrassed the administration and her patron, Senator McCain, or she would have committed a diplomatic blunder.
Either way the question was a "no-win" and she was smart not to answer it.
At any rate, now we can look forward to Gibson's interview with Joe Biden and the snares he has set for him. Or maybe not.
RLC
