Friday, September 12, 2008

Palin: 1, Gibson: 0

You wanna know about the Bush Doctrine?

The term was coined by columnist Charles Krauthammer in his June 4, 2001 column. In his column today, "Charlie Gibson's Gaffe", he says that ABC's Charles Gibson was wrong when he claimed that "The Bush Doctrine" was about "anticipatory self-defense". That is, indeed one of the facets of Bush foreign policy, but Krauthammer's term originally referred to Bush's hostility to the ABM and Kyoto treaties. Probably the single overarching policy of The Bush Doctrine today, Krauthammer says, is support for democracy worldwide. And this isn't even really a signature policy of the Bush Administration: it takes pieces of JFK's inaugural address ("... bear any burden, meet any hardship ..."), the Truman Doctrine, and Woodrow Wilson's "14 Points".

But Charlie Gibson was WAY off. And Palin's response, "In what respect, Charlie?" was closer to the truth than Gibson was. But Gibson looked down his nose, sighed, and corrected her.

Here's the link to Krauthammer's column.

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