Palin's impatient (and wrong) foreign policy teacher

Sarah Palin's anticipated interview with ABC's Charlie Gibson is now being publicised by some in the media as conclusive proof of the Governor of Alaska's lack of foreign policy experience. At one point of the interview Gibson asked Palin if she agreed with the "Bush doctrine". Her answer ("In what respect Charlie?") is being mocked as evidence of Palin's ignorance, an ignorance to be expected from a woman politician who, quite obviously for Gibson and many others, has no business in contending for the vice presidency of the United States.

According to the creator of the term, Washington Post columnist Charles Krauthammer, Palin was right in demanding from Gibson a clarification of his question. Gibson's characterization of the "Bush doctrine" as purely a doctrine of preemptive war is wrong according to Krauthammer:

It's the third in a series and was superseded by the fourth and current definition of the Bush doctrine, the most sweeping formulation of the Bush approach to foreign policy and the one that most clearly and distinctively defines the Bush years: the idea that the fundamental mission of American foreign policy is to spread democracy throughout the world. It was most dramatically enunciated in Bush's second inaugural address: "The survival of liberty in our land increasingly depends on the success of liberty in other lands. The best hope for peace in our world is the expansion of freedom in all the world."

Krauthammer centers his criticism in Gibson's perceived exasperation on defining the Bush doctrine for Palin and how this issue has been overexploited by the pundits to further dicredit McCain's VP pick:

Yes, Sarah Palin didn't know what it is. But neither does Charlie Gibson. And at least she didn't pretend to know -- while he looked down his nose and over his glasses with weary disdain, sighing and "sounding like an impatient teacher," as the Times noted. In doing so, he captured perfectly the establishment snobbery and intellectual condescension that has characterized the chattering classes' reaction to the mother of five who presumes to play on their stage.