http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/09/14/BAU112SFSU.DTL&type=politics
How does President Palin sound?
Willie Brown
Sunday, September 14, 2008
For first time in modern history, a presidential race is actually going to be decided by the vice presidential pick.
Thanks to Sarah Palin, this is no longer a contest between Barack Obama and John McCain - it's between Brother Barack and Sistah Sarah.
Rock star vs. rock star. Inexperienced vs. inexperienced. Newcomer vs. newcomer. Change vs. change.
His "change" is East Coast intellectual. Her "change" is NASCAR.
His change is wine and cheese. Her change is mayonnaise by the gallon.
And notice how everyone is calling her Sarah Palin - not Gov. Palin. That's not good for the Democrats. It shows a certain familiarity that goes beyond just issues or her knowledge of the "Bush Doctrine."
Heck, even I didn't know what the Bush Doctrine was when Charlie Gibson asked her about it the other night on her first national TV interview.
The Democrats have got to get to the core of this new campaign. It's not a pretty thought, but somehow Democrats must plant in voters' minds that, given McCain's age and his health history, he might not make it through the term if he's elected.
Even if McCain does make it through a term, it's not likely he'll seek re-election and she will be the natural successor.
In other words, Sarah Palin may indeed be president someday.
Then there is the question of how to boost the turnout in key states.
Palin has become an instant heroine with the Wal-Mart crowd in Ohio, Nevada, Pennsylvania and other critical states. And Wal-Marters are a lot more likely to volunteer or show up at the polls than the younger people Obama has attracted.
Right now, the best shot Obama has of winning is to get out and register 12 million or so unregistered blacks, especially in the South. But he has got to do it without anyone noticing.
Palin will have no problem signing up new voters in her group. She can go to the Mountain Dew 250 in Talladega, Ala., and pitch for votes, and no one will bat an eye.
But Obama can't go to a meeting called by Al Sharpton to get out the black vote, because if he does there will be a backlash.
He's got to do it under the radar.
And forget the comedy, Barack. You are not naturally funny and you do not speak "street." You speak like a professor. And you do not know how to set up a joke.
That "lipstick on a pig" line clearly backfired.
If you had said, "As John McCain said about Hillary Clinton's health care ... lipstick on a pig is still a pig," at least you would have had a frame of reference to fall back on.
You didn't, you left yourself left wide open and you got nailed. Now everything you say will be double-examined for sexism.
On the bright side, as far as Obama is concerned, is that the Susie Buells of the world - the hard-core Hillary supporters - are starting to get worried. That might translate into some action.
Want to sound off? Send an e-mail to wbrown@sfchronicle.com.
This article appeared on page B - 1 of the San Francisco Chronicle
Showing posts with label Charlie Gibson. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Charlie Gibson. Show all posts
Thursday, September 18, 2008
Monday, September 15, 2008
What Is the Bush Doctrine, Anyway?
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/blog/2008/09/12/BL2008091201471.html
What Is the Bush Doctrine, Anyway?
By Dan Froomkin
Special to washingtonpost.com
Friday, September 12, 2008
Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin's evident cluelessness when asked in an interview yesterday if she agreed with the Bush Doctrine is appropriately being seen as emblematic of her ignorance of foreign policy.
But as it happens, I'm not sure anyone is entirely clear on what the Bush Doctrine is at this particular moment.
When Palin asked ABC anchor Charlie Gibson what he meant by the Bush Doctrine, Gibson clarifed: "The Bush doctrine, enunciated September 2002, before the Iraq war." That should have helped. After it was obvious Palin still didn't know what he was talking about, Gibson ventured further: "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's reply: "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."
But Gibson was making a common error, and what Palin said in her response did not actually address what was so radical about Bush's contribution to American foreign policy. Preemption has in fact been a staple of our foreign policy for ages -- and other countries' as well. The twist Bush put on it was embracing "preventive" war: Taking action well before an attack was imminent -- invading a country that was simply perceived as threatening.
And to be completely accurate, there have been several Bush Doctrines over the years. Another dramatic announcement, you may recall, was his declaration on Sept. 20, 2001: "Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists. From this day forward, any nation that continues to harbor or support terrorism will be regarded by the United States as a hostile regime." (Or, as he put it on Feb. 11, 2002: "You're either with us or against us; you're either evil or you're good."
And then there was Bush's second inaugural address, when he pledged himself to spreading freedom and ending tyranny in the world.
The one thing all these Bush Doctrines have in common is that they are, at this point, utterly inoperative.
As I suggested in my August 18 column, the current Bush Doctrine could perhaps best be described as "Incompetence and Internal Warfare."
Back in March 2006, when Bush officially reasserted his doctrine of preventive war in a reissued National Security Strategy document, it was a bit surreal. The Bush administration had by then, of course, lost any credibility in making the case to attack another country with anything short of incontrovertible evidence of an imminent threat.
And Bush's vaunted democracy initiative was never anything but a farce, as he cozied up to one dictator after another as long as they helped us with other strategic goals, including fighting terrorism and providing us with energy.
Jacob Weisberg, in his book "The Bush Tragedy," actually identified six Bush Doctrines: Bush Doctrine 1.0 was Unipolar Realism (3/7/99--9/10/01); Bush Doctrine 2.0 was With Us or Against Us (9/11/01--5/31/02); Bush Doctrine 3.0 was Preemption (6/1/02--11/5/03); Bush Doctrine 4.0 was Democracy in the Middle East (11/6/03--1/19/05); Bush Doctrine 5.0 was Freedom Everywhere (1/20/05-- 11/7/06); and Bush Doctrine 6.0 (11/8/06 to date) is the "absence of any functioning doctrine at all."
What Is the Bush Doctrine, Anyway?
By Dan Froomkin
Special to washingtonpost.com
Friday, September 12, 2008
Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin's evident cluelessness when asked in an interview yesterday if she agreed with the Bush Doctrine is appropriately being seen as emblematic of her ignorance of foreign policy.
But as it happens, I'm not sure anyone is entirely clear on what the Bush Doctrine is at this particular moment.
When Palin asked ABC anchor Charlie Gibson what he meant by the Bush Doctrine, Gibson clarifed: "The Bush doctrine, enunciated September 2002, before the Iraq war." That should have helped. After it was obvious Palin still didn't know what he was talking about, Gibson ventured further: "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's reply: "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."
But Gibson was making a common error, and what Palin said in her response did not actually address what was so radical about Bush's contribution to American foreign policy. Preemption has in fact been a staple of our foreign policy for ages -- and other countries' as well. The twist Bush put on it was embracing "preventive" war: Taking action well before an attack was imminent -- invading a country that was simply perceived as threatening.
And to be completely accurate, there have been several Bush Doctrines over the years. Another dramatic announcement, you may recall, was his declaration on Sept. 20, 2001: "Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists. From this day forward, any nation that continues to harbor or support terrorism will be regarded by the United States as a hostile regime." (Or, as he put it on Feb. 11, 2002: "You're either with us or against us; you're either evil or you're good."
And then there was Bush's second inaugural address, when he pledged himself to spreading freedom and ending tyranny in the world.
The one thing all these Bush Doctrines have in common is that they are, at this point, utterly inoperative.
As I suggested in my August 18 column, the current Bush Doctrine could perhaps best be described as "Incompetence and Internal Warfare."
Back in March 2006, when Bush officially reasserted his doctrine of preventive war in a reissued National Security Strategy document, it was a bit surreal. The Bush administration had by then, of course, lost any credibility in making the case to attack another country with anything short of incontrovertible evidence of an imminent threat.
And Bush's vaunted democracy initiative was never anything but a farce, as he cozied up to one dictator after another as long as they helped us with other strategic goals, including fighting terrorism and providing us with energy.
Jacob Weisberg, in his book "The Bush Tragedy," actually identified six Bush Doctrines: Bush Doctrine 1.0 was Unipolar Realism (3/7/99--9/10/01); Bush Doctrine 2.0 was With Us or Against Us (9/11/01--5/31/02); Bush Doctrine 3.0 was Preemption (6/1/02--11/5/03); Bush Doctrine 4.0 was Democracy in the Middle East (11/6/03--1/19/05); Bush Doctrine 5.0 was Freedom Everywhere (1/20/05-- 11/7/06); and Bush Doctrine 6.0 (11/8/06 to date) is the "absence of any functioning doctrine at all."
Charlie Gibson's Gaffe
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/09/12/AR2008091202457.html?hpid=opinionsbox1
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.
Then came 9/11, and that notion was immediately superseded by the advent of the war on terror. In his address to the joint session of Congress nine days after 9/11, President Bush declared: "Either you are with us or you are with the terrorists. From this day forward any nation that continues to harbor or support terrorism will be regarded by the United States as a hostile regime." This "with us or against us" policy regarding terror -- first deployed against Pakistan when Secretary of State Colin Powell gave President Musharraf that seven-point ultimatum to end support for the Taliban and support our attack on Afghanistan -- became the essence of the Bush doctrine.
Until Iraq. A year later, when the Iraq war was looming, Bush offered his major justification by enunciating a doctrine of preemptive war. This is the one Charlie Gibson thinks is the Bush doctrine.
It's not. It's the third in a series and was superseded by the fourth and current definition of the Bush doctrine, the most sweeping formulation of the Bush approach to foreign policy and the one that most clearly and distinctively defines the Bush years: the idea that the fundamental mission of American foreign policy is to spread democracy throughout the world. It was most dramatically enunciated in Bush's second inaugural address: "The survival of liberty in our land increasingly depends on the success of liberty in other lands. The best hope for peace in our world is the expansion of freedom in all the world."
This declaration of a sweeping, universal American freedom agenda was consciously meant to echo John Kennedy's pledge in his inaugural address that the United States "shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, in order to assure the survival and the success of liberty." It draws also from the Truman doctrine of March 1947 and from Wilson's 14 points.
If I were in any public foreign policy debate today, and my adversary were to raise the Bush doctrine, both I and the audience would assume -- unless my interlocutor annotated the reference otherwise -- that he was speaking about the grandly proclaimed (and widely attacked) freedom agenda of the Bush administration.
Not the Gibson doctrine of preemption.
Not the "with us or against us" no-neutrality-is-permitted policy of the immediate post-9/11 days.
Not the unilateralism that characterized the pre-9/11 first year of the Bush administration.
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.
letters@charleskrauthammer.com
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.
Then came 9/11, and that notion was immediately superseded by the advent of the war on terror. In his address to the joint session of Congress nine days after 9/11, President Bush declared: "Either you are with us or you are with the terrorists. From this day forward any nation that continues to harbor or support terrorism will be regarded by the United States as a hostile regime." This "with us or against us" policy regarding terror -- first deployed against Pakistan when Secretary of State Colin Powell gave President Musharraf that seven-point ultimatum to end support for the Taliban and support our attack on Afghanistan -- became the essence of the Bush doctrine.
Until Iraq. A year later, when the Iraq war was looming, Bush offered his major justification by enunciating a doctrine of preemptive war. This is the one Charlie Gibson thinks is the Bush doctrine.
It's not. It's the third in a series and was superseded by the fourth and current definition of the Bush doctrine, the most sweeping formulation of the Bush approach to foreign policy and the one that most clearly and distinctively defines the Bush years: the idea that the fundamental mission of American foreign policy is to spread democracy throughout the world. It was most dramatically enunciated in Bush's second inaugural address: "The survival of liberty in our land increasingly depends on the success of liberty in other lands. The best hope for peace in our world is the expansion of freedom in all the world."
This declaration of a sweeping, universal American freedom agenda was consciously meant to echo John Kennedy's pledge in his inaugural address that the United States "shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, in order to assure the survival and the success of liberty." It draws also from the Truman doctrine of March 1947 and from Wilson's 14 points.
If I were in any public foreign policy debate today, and my adversary were to raise the Bush doctrine, both I and the audience would assume -- unless my interlocutor annotated the reference otherwise -- that he was speaking about the grandly proclaimed (and widely attacked) freedom agenda of the Bush administration.
Not the Gibson doctrine of preemption.
Not the "with us or against us" no-neutrality-is-permitted policy of the immediate post-9/11 days.
Not the unilateralism that characterized the pre-9/11 first year of the Bush administration.
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.
letters@charleskrauthammer.com
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