I could go on and on about why, but one point really irks me: the continuous repeating of lies coupled with this tendency to encourage people to debate the truth. Clearly, the purpose is to appeal to the idiots in the electorate who will believe anything if you say it enough and will do anything if you instill enough doubt in them. But isn't it still a low tactic? To attempt to coast to victory by appealing to the least educated among us? It should be incredibly disturbing to all of you...
I bring this up due to the latest "Bush Doctrine" fiasco. For those of you who didn't see the interview, here's the transcript:
Gibson: “Do you agree with the Bush Doctrine?” Palin: “In what respect, Charlie?” Gibson: “Well, what do you interpret it to be?” Palin: “His world view?” Gibson: “The Bush Doctrine, annuciated September 2002, before the Iraq war.” Palin: “I believe that what President Bush has attempted to do is rid this world of Islamic extremism, terrorists who are hell-bent on destroying our nation. There have been blunders along the way, though. There have been mistakes made, and with new leadership, and that's the beauty of American elections, of course, and democracy, is with new leadership comes opportunity to do things better.” Gibson: “The Bush Doctrine as I understand it, is that we have the right of anticipatory self-defense, we have the right to a preemptive strike against any other country that we think is going to attack us. Do you agree with us?” Palin: “Charlie, if there is legitimate and enough intelligent that tells us that a strike is imminent against American people, we have every right to defend our country.”
Ms. Palin was prompted FOUR times for an answer, and she wasn't able to comment until Gibson essentially gave it to her. I think it's fair to say that she was 100% clueless on this obvious piece of modern foreign policy.
And yet...!
And yet, McCain/Palin supporters are DEFENDING this ignorance on her part, claiming that Gibson's question was "ambiguous." See, they're saying that the "Bush Doctrine" refers to the National Security Strategy, and since it's a nine chapter, 35-page document covering a variety of topics, the question was vague and she had the right to be confused. So there, liberal media!
But this is factually incorrect. The Bush Doctrine is not a written document. Like all famous American political doctrines beforehand (Monroe, Truman, the Roosevelt Corollary, etc.), they began as statements, either delivered orally or through actions, about a new type of policy. And because the creators were usually presidents, they later underscored all actions of that administration including legislation. But to say that a doctrine refers to a specific piece of writing is totally, TOTALLY, false.
And yet...!
And yet, people are buying this nonsense! They're accepting the idea that Palin just got confused by the question! What the McCain camp is trying to do is redefine the definition of doctrine to get Palin out of this mess. In short, they're trying to make established fact ambiguous! How are they not getting called out for this? How is no media outlet or logical voice saying: "No, that is NOT what a doctrine refers to and Palin undoubtably showed her incompitence on foreign policy." Instead, we're getting told that Gibson's question was broad and misleading and "Bush Doctrine" is the subtitle of some section of Bush's website. No, it isn't. It has never been that before so there's no way it should be that now and the fact that they're trying to make us think it should is sickening.
(But seriously? You need clarification on what the Bush Doctrine is? That's probably a vocab word in modern high school US History textbooks, and a candidate for VP can't easily define and give her thoughts on it? Wow.)
