Dark Star

As I said, I think Palin was right to seek clarification on Gibson's question. John McCormick (and others) at The Corner point out exactly why clarification was needed.

Andy McCarthy has an excellent post cutting through the nonsense that Sarah Palin supposedly doesn't know what the Bush Doctrine is. McCarthy writes that many people disagree about what exactly 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.

As Richard Starr notes below, even members of the ABC News team--including Charles Gibson--have defined the Bush Doctrine in different ways over the past 7 years.

At the end of the day, however, perception is reality. And I think she looked like she didn't know.

In reality, I think she (correctly) sensed a "gotcha," setup and was a little surprised by it, which was why she came to a halting stop in her rhythm.
__