A number of con­ser­v­a­tive intel­lec­tu­als (e.g. Richard Starr and Andy McCarthy) are trying to quash the big story out of last night’s Sarah Palin inter­view, namely her unfa­mil­iar­ity with the Bush Doc­trine. To aid this quash­ing, they’re engag­ing in a clever bit of leg­erde­main, argu­ing that, well, no one really knows exactly what the Bush Doc­trine is, because it’s gone through so many iter­a­tions and versions.

Which is true. And com­pletely beside the point.

The prob­lem was not that Palin couldn’t decide among com­pet­ing inter­pre­ta­tions of the Bush Doc­trine,* it’s that she appeared to have never heard the phrase in her life, as evi­denced by the fol­low­ing exchange:

GIBSON: Do you agree with the Bush doctrine?

PALIN: In what respect, Charlie?

GIBSON: The Bush — well, what do you — what do you inter­pret it to be?

PALIN: His world view.

No one who had heard the phrase in con­text before–or who wasn’t sure which iter­a­tion of it was meant–would ever respond with “His world view.” And even some­one who didn’t know there was a Bush Doc­trine but who was aware of the Monroe or Truman Doc­trines would know enough not to say “His world view.” He or she would also prob­a­bly know that it had some­thing spe­cific to do with using force to achieve geopo­lit­i­cal strate­gic objec­tives, and might even be quick-​witted enough to ask which ver­sion of the Bush Doc­trine Gibson was talk­ing about, to draw out some help. But “His world view?” That part just sounded ridiculous.

Nor did things get any better for Palin when Gibson tried to help her out with a date:

GIBSON: No, the Bush doc­trine, enun­ci­ated 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.

James Fal­lows at The Atlantic has more on why this mat­ters here.

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*NB: I edited this sen­tence for clar­ity, which is why it no longer matches the ver­sion Ben Smith quoted.