Oh Snap! Dr. Krauthammer Calls Out Charlie Gibson

September 12, 2008 by Frank Gannon | Filed Under American Politics, Bush Administration, Election 2008, International Affairs, Media, National Security, War on Terror 

In a column datelined tomorrow but currently available on the Washington Post’s website, Charles Krauthammer deconstructs “Charlie Gibson’s Gaffe”.

The subject is the Bush Doctrine — whatever that means.  Which is precisely Dr. Krauthammer’s point.

What Mr. Gibson clearly (indeed, almost obscenely, so silkily did he pose his short but carefully crafted question) had in mind when he sat down for his interview with Governor Pailn was the ultimate gotcha moment.

He would casually ask her whether she agreed with the Bush Doctrine.  And that would be it.  No need to stand around folks — it’s all over, you can go home now.  Finis.  The end.  That’s all she wrote — so to speak.  

And he, good old Charlie Gibson of ABC News, the man so friendly his first name is a diminutive, would go down in history as having singlehandedly accomplished what every liberal on the planet has been fantasizing about 24/7 since two weeks ago yesterday.  With seven short words he would have exposed Sarah Palin as the jumped-up parvenu everyone knows she really is.

And, at least so far, that is pretty much the way the mainstream media has been playing it.  The New York Times reported: 

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.”

But Charles Krauthammer says it’s actually Mr. Gibson who got it wrong.  And Charles Krauthammer has some standing on this subject:

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.

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