ABC NEWS- Palin Interview Part I

I've decided to post some live graded responses to Charlie Gibson's interviews of Sarah Palin as I watch them. Not as they happen, but as I watch them. And I just finished watching Part 1 with Palin of which the focus was foreign policy. I'm going to give my grades for both Gibson and Palin.

We're gonna call this one Lipstick Diplomacy

Palin
D

At least she got the names of some foreign leaders correct, which is better than Bush did in 2000 and probably still today. But she admitted she had never been out of the country until last year and had never met a foreign head of state. In other words, she's never conducted foreign policy in her entire life. She's had plenty of prep time to get heads of state correct and to get some brief talking points memorized and that is really about all we got from her.

She wouldn't answer if she agreed with the Bush Doctrine of preventive invasion but did suggest that given good intelligence we should protect ourselves, which is the opposite of the Bush Doctrine. Like Gibson said during the interview, I was lost in a bunch of words about her agreement with Bush foreign policy (I don't think she even knew what Gibson was talking about).

Her biggest claim to any foreign policy is being close to Russia of whom she thinks we "perhaps" should go to war with if Russia decides to conduct preventative war much like George Bush has done for 6 years. (Note that she's close to Siberia and not necessarily Russia. However, I'm in Illinois which is close to Wisconsin which is close to Michigan which is close to Canada so therefor I'm an expert on foreign policy.) Six degrees of separation is no way to conduct foreign policy. I'm hoping this is her weakest area because I don't see how she could get any weaker.

Gibson
B

I thought he did fair with this part of the interview. He pushed her on the Bush Doctrine question and he pushed her again on the questions about Bush's war in Iraq being a task from God, which she totally flubbed. He also made her answer the question about the Iraq war being the will of God. She answered that she didn't know, which contradicts what she said in church. Either she lied in church or she's lying to Gibson.

Gibson seemed objective and the only thing I would have wanted to see more of was a question about Iraq having anything to do with 9/11 and if invading Iraq was the right thing to do, especially based on her previous answer that we should only invade when the intelligence isn't flawed. In summary he did better than I thought he would do.

I'll have more parts coming soon.