The Discerning Texan

This was sent to Kathryn Jean Lopez:

Hi Kathryn,

Just caught the Palin interview on the West Coast. Some observations:

1) Gibson was acting like he was giving her a pop quiz.

2) The exchange about the "holy war". I've read transcripts somewhere that contain this:
—-
a) GIBSON: You said recently, in your old church, “Our national leaders are sending U.S. soldiers on a task that is from God.” Are we fighting a holy war?

b) PALIN: You know, I don’t know if that was my exact quote.

c) GIBSON: Exact words
—-
The version that I saw on the West Coast does NOT have (b) and (c) above. Also, they showed a YouTube clip with the longer, more complete version of her statement. Did all the complaining about how he quoted her out of context make them edit the version shown on the West Coast, to make it more fair? Did anybody see (b) and (c) above on the East Coast?

And (of course), they were NOT her "exact words"--he didn't even use the whole sentence.

What a LAME hit job, Charlie. Now your rear end is exposed for all to see... Go figure.

More on the interview from Andrew McCarthy:

Seeing reports along those lines, like this one. What a bunch of nonsense.

Peanut gallery denizens like me, who don't have states to run and who follow this stuff very closely, disagree intensely among ourselves about what the Bush Doctrine is.

To take just one example, the eminent Norman Podhoretz and I have strongly disagreed about it: Norman says the promotion of democracy has always been an essential element; I think it's been at best a subordinate element and that the real Bush Doctrine simply holds that terror sponsoring states will be treated exactly as terrorists (i.e., open themselves up to attack) if they don't convincingly foreswear terrorism. Norman may very well be right — he backs his argument up with lots of statements by the president. But the point is that reasonable, informed minds can differ.

Gibson homed in on preemptive attacks — in the tone of "Oh, you didn't know the Bush Doctrine was all about the right to attack preemptively." I would dispute the premise that the Bush Doctrine is necessarily about preemptive attacks. The right of preemptive attack is an element of the right of self-defense, which is a natural right of states and was a bedrock of international law before there ever was a Bush Doctrine. News Flash for you Democrats and media types out there: About 40 years before there was a Bush Doctrine, JFK was relying on the self-defense right of preemptive attack during the Cuban Missile Crisis.

The Bush Doctrine, technically, is not asserting a right of preemptive attack. It is saying that if Country A facilitates terror, it is responsible for that terrorist organization's strikes, and therefore we can attack Country A. That is not preemptive; it is retributive.

It was utterly reasonable for Gov. Palin to press Charlie Gibson on what Gibson meant by the Bush Doctrine. Everyone does not mean the same thing by the term, there is lots of good faith argument about what it means, and — because the administration itself has only half-heartedly adhered to it — there is also the confusion between theory and practice.

Finally, this from Kathryn Jean, again:

An e-mail:

"I don't think Palin was at her best..."

I quibble with this. Sure, we have seen her look better in much, much,
much easier circumstances.

But I really can not imagine any time, any place where one person has
been put under more pressure from a skilled and prepared interrogator
with tens of millions watching her every expression and intent on her
every word. And this a public test over a vast array of public
concerns, many of which she does not pretend and has no possibility of
being expert in.

This is like setting a high jumper's bar five feet above the world
record and then noticing that this athlete does not look great facing
this impossible task. How much terror would you have seen in candidate
George Bush's eyes facing this situation? How much would Obama
stammer? This is a test where a "c" would be a world-class mark.

This is The Corner at its finest. A++ guys. As for you, Charlie: expect a call from MSNBC any day now...