Krugman, on last night’s bailout blowup:

How did we get to this point? It’s the culmination of many past betrayals.

First of all, we have the Republican Study Committee blowing things up with a complete nonsense proposal — solving the crisis with a holiday on capital gains taxes. How is that possible? Well, if a party runs on economic nonsense for 25 years, eventually many of its foot soldiers will be people who actually believe the nonsense.

More specifically, though, the failure to get a deal reflects the betrayals of the Bush years. Democrats weren’t going to trust Henry Paulson, because behind him they see the ghost of Colin Powell (and Paulson’s “all your bailout are belong to me” proposal, aside from being bad economics, showed an incredible tone-deafness.)

And after the way the Bushies and their allies double-crossed the Democrats again and again in the aftermath of 9/11 — demand national unity, then accuse you of being soft on terrorists anyway — there’s no way Pelosi and Reid will do the responsible but unpopular thing unless the Republicans agree to share ownership.

So what we now have is non-functional government in the face of a major crisis, because Congress includes a quorum of crazies and nobody trusts the White House an inch.

As a friend said last night, we’ve become a banana republic with nukes.

I’m willing to bet that at least she won’t be capable of this:

The time had come for the vice president to step in. Proxies were not getting the job done. Cheney was going to have to take hold of this thing himself.

Even now, after months of debate, Cheney did not enlist the president. Bush was across the river in Arlington, commending the winners of the Malcolm Baldrige awards for quality improvement in private industry. Campaign season had come already, and the president was doing a lot of that kind of thing. That week he had a fundraiser in Dallas, a “Bush-Cheney 2004 event” in Santa Clara, Calif., and a meet-and-greet at a rodeo in Houston.

Soon after hearing what had happened between Goldsmith and Gonzales, the vice president asked Andy Card to set up a meeting at noon with Mike Hayden, FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III, and John McLaughlin from the CIA (substituting for his boss, George J. Tenet). Cheney spoke to them in Card’s office, the door closed.

(more…)

I’m proud to announce that today at 4:35pm I found the needle in the National Review haystack. It’s this anecdote, from David Frum:

Somebody who knew President Bush well once remarked to me. “You’ll notice he never asks questions.”

“Why not?” I said.

“Because he doesn’t know what it’s okay for him not to know.”

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.

+++

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

From deep in a NYT article about Sarah Palin’s preparations for the press and Joe Biden:

Aides traveling with Ms. Palin have reported back to associates that she is a fast study—asking few questions of her policy briefers but quickly repeating back their main points—who already has considerable ease and experience before cameras.

A former aide in Alaska who had helped prepare Ms. Palin for her campaign debates there said she had a talent for distilling information into digestible sound bites. The aide said she generally prefers light preparatory materials to heavy briefing books…

Remind you of anyone?

UPDATE [9/11]: I see that Andrew Sullivan and others have had the same thought. What can I say? Garbage in, garbage out. When I get my brain back from the clutches of this unholy obsession, I’ll try to steer clear of such low-hanging fruit.

UPDATE [9/11]: Just a little more fuel for this particular fire. Here’s Palin in her interview with Charlie Gibson tonight:

GIBSON: And you didn’t say to yourself, “Am I experienced enough? Am I ready? Do I know enough about international affairs? Do I–will I feel comfortable enough on the national stage to do this?”

PALIN: I didn’t hesitate, no.

GIBSON: Didn’t that take some hubris?

PALIN: I–I answered him yes because I have the confidence in that readiness and knowing that you can’t blink, you have to be wired in a way of being so committed to the mission, the mission that we’re on, reform of this country and victory in the war, you can’t blink.

(Photo illustration by The Huffington Post.)

So it turns out that when the Republicans were chanting “Drill, baby, drill” during Sarah Palin’s speech at the RNC, what they really meant was “Booze, coke, and sexual favors.”

I suppose it’s comforting, in a deeply perverse way, that even in the midst of Palinmania the one thing we can count on to remind voters what’s at stake in this election is the unadulterated corruption and venality of the Bush Administration.