Palin is unqualified, but her judgment is still better than McCain's

In an interview with Charlie Gibson, (see Ezra Klein for the video) Gov. Palin wasn’t familiar with the Bush Doctrine. James Fallows explains why this is a problem:

What Sarah Palin revealed is that she has not been interested enough in world affairs to become minimally conversant with the issues. Many people in our great land might have difficulty defining the "Bush Doctrine" exactly. But not to recognize the name, as obviously was the case for Palin, indicates not a failure of last-minute cramming but a lack of attention to any foreign-policy discussion whatsoever in the last seven years.

For me, the big question is which is scarier: that Gov. Palin hasn’t followed foreign policy or that her judgment in ignorance is still better than John McCain’s?

Details after the cut

The Bush Doctrine initially referred to treating states harbor terrorist the same way we would states that directly sponsor them. So 9/11 provided cause a justification for war against the Taliban under that doctrine. That was a new idea, but not a particularly controversial one given the circumstances. It later morphed into the idea of preventative war; going to war with a potential threat before they have the capability to be an imminent threat. This is a bad idea and gets us into messes like Iraq.

Preventative war is often confused with preemptive action, which means striking first in the face of an imminent threat. Preemptive strikes can be used to justify aggression, but at the same time it’s hard to make the case for letting missiles hit you before acting. Back to Fallows:

Sarah Palin did not know this issue, or any part of it. The view she actually expressed -- an endorsement of "preemptive" action -- was fine on its own merits. But it is not the stated doctrine of the Bush Administration, it is not the policy her running mate has endorsed, and it is not the concept under which her own son is going off to Iraq.

When asked about the surge back in 2006, Palin similarly showed ignorance and broke with her future running mate (via Sullivan).

Alaska Business Monthly: We’ve lost a lot of Alaska’s military members to the war in Iraq. How do you feel about sending more troops into battle, as President Bush is suggesting?

Palin: I’ve been so focused on state government, I haven’t really focused much on the war in Iraq. I heard on the news about the new deployments, and while I support our president, Condoleezza Rice and the administration, I want to know that we have an exit plan in place; I want assurances that we are doing all we can to keep our troops safe. [emphasis mine]

Exit plan was most assuredly not the Bush or McCain strategy then. The President has now accepted Maliki’s demands for a timetable (with serious hedging) but McCain still hasn’t come around to that view.

Comments

[Moti]

It's just that to take a reasonable position at this point is to divide from McCain's current stance. If you get an intelligent but uninformed response, you don't get the extreme positions currently held by McCain.

But yeah, the lack of curiosity on the part of Palin is disturbing there. We've had enough of that already, right?

[Greg Sanders]

Yeah. I mean okay she's in state government not national government, but she seems to have no trouble seeing herself in higher office. This is pretty basic stuff if you're actively following the issues.