Timothy Noah makes a fair point.
You could say this talk of The Bush Doctrine gives Bush 43 too much credit, as if he’s left us some grand foreign policy legacy on par with Monroe, Teddy Roosevelt and Truman.
… In his book The Bush Tragedy, my Slate colleague Jacob Weisberg identifies and dates five separate Bush Doctrines: Unipolar Realism (March 7, 1999-Sept. 10, 2001), With Us or Against Us (Sept. 11, 2001-May 31, 2002), Pre-emption (June 1, 2002-Nov. 5, 2003), Democracy in the Middle East (Nov. 6, 2003-Jan. 19, 2005), and Freedom Everywhere (Jan. 20, 2005-Nov. 7, 2006). This last—a theme Bush raised in his second inaugural address—was judged a pipe dream even by Dick Cheney, and after its swift demise, Weisberg writes, the Bush White House gave up on defining its foreign policy at all.
Of course, Palin couldn’t very well say that. So maybe her ignorance on the point was a lucky break.
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