That Matt Damon clip is hilarious. I'm pretty sure he's being deadly serious but the whole "I really need to know this" part was just too awesome.
I also love how Republicans are dismissive of celebrities until they find one like Stephen Baldwin to stump for them and then they fawn all over them. Or, you know, when one runs for office as a Republican (Looking at you Reagan, Schwartzenegger, Fred Thompson)
As hot as Matt Damon is...Katha Pollitt waxes on this topic much more exquisitely:
http://www.thenation.com/doc/200...0080929/
pollitt
Thanks Mary Beth 
. Katha Pollitt is absolutely fantastic. This is one of my favorite pieces she's ever done, I think.
Isn't it funny how everything is either a "stumble" or a home run these days?
The question itself on a "Bush Doctrine," was idiotic. Bush himself was repackaging a profile of the duties of a president that goes back to whenever.
Republicans were foolish to go for a high stakes, do or die sit down. No one is gonna be swayed one way or the other from it.
She'd be waaaay better off in a press conference environment. The classic press scrum. They are dangerously close to having her being too robotic and predictable with this sit down format.
The upshot is the press corp will over reach and then they can credibly talk about a witch hunt. It's starting to echo empty now...
You're right Gene, politically Palin should have gone for a press conference because it would have allowed her to use another Bush doctrine - only call on the reporters she knows to be friendly or reporters from celebrity/entertainment news orgs.
"Governor Palin can you tell us where you got those wonderful glasses?"
(Unfortunately NPR told me where she got those glasses this morning.)
Good one. Actually had not thought of that angle, but it makes total sense.
You KNOW even the hardest of hard core DC reporters would have 'gone there' after the hard stuff was exhausted...just to be different and for their own ego reasons.
And guess what would have made the news? The Glasses Question. Good call there...
BTW, Not that I even think referencing Mr. Krauthammer in the Post today means anything here, but he quite accurately called out Charlie Gibson for how he in fact, had the 'Bush Doctrine' completely wrong when he explained it to her.
Her parrying that back to him looked awkward in the short lens, but over a bit of time will look better once people grasp how stupid that question was.
I can't believe anyone's questioning the question on the Bush Doctrine. Preemptive was as defined by Bush goes way back? Not hardly.
meant to type "preemptive war" oops
Read all about it:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bus...i/
Bush_Doctrine
The Wikipideia description picks up at the third variants of the Bush Doctri:ne:
"...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.'
This declaration of a sweeping, universal American freedom agenda was consciously meant to echo John Kennedy's pledge in his inaugural address that the United States "shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, in order to assure the survival and the success of liberty." It draws also from the Truman doctrine of March 1947 and from Wilson's 14 points.
If I were in any public foreign policy debate today, and my adversary were to raise the Bush doctrine, both I and the audience would assume -- unless my interlocutor annotated the reference otherwise -- that he was speaking about the grandly proclaimed (and widely attacked) freedom agenda of the Bush administration..."
Not my words of course. At the end of it all, it's the version we all know that Bus h will be remembered for.
My heartburn is with Gibson's question. It was just too loose for me, but a most reasonable question for her.
I don't know anyone personally who would think about Bush and and Kennedy having anything in common as to nurturing democracy, but I suppose there are some who think of Bush that way. Everybody I know thinks immediately of his dangerous "pre-emptive war" garbage that claims we can attack any nation if, in our paranoid greed, we decide it might benefit certain corporations, our cronies or our political agenda.
Now if Sarah had asked which part of the doctrine Gibson wanted her to explain, or in any way showed she knew what he was talking about, I might believe the problem was with the question and not the person squirming and reaching to provide an answer. In this case, however, Sarah clearly had no idea of any part of the Doctrine or even what a doctrine is. "You mean his world view," she asked ....
Interestingly, one of Palin's "handlers" who prepped her for the interview (and upcoming debates) was one of the Bush staffers who helped shape the original Bush Doctrine.
Because of that I doubt highly it never came up in their prep, but we'll never know for sure.
My take on the moment was the volley was by design, but her body English gave it away.
Forget the Pailn interview. How about that The View insanity with McCain? The, ahem, untruths are coming so fast from him now he lost track.
How is it that this stupid show showed the most stones of any interview this campaign? He got savaged. It was great watching...
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