It was pretty embarrassing when Palin didn’t know what the Bush Doctrine was, but John Mark Reynolds has a good article arguing that sounding smart in politics is about BS. He uses this Obama quote as an example:
SIEGEL: Senator Obama, the short version of the Obama Doctrine.
SEN. OBAMA: Well, I think one of the things about the Obama Doctrine is it’s not going to be as doctrinaire as the Bush Doctrine because the world is complicated. And I think part of the problem we’ve had is that ideology has overridden facts and reality.
But I think that the basic concept — and I’ve heard it from some of the other folks — is that, increasingly, we have to view our security in terms of a common security and a common prosperity with other peoples and other countries. And that means that if there are children in the Middle East who cannot read, that is a potential long-term danger to us. If China is polluting, then eventually that is going to reach our shores. We have to — and work with them cooperatively to solve their problems as well as ours.
[...] Did anyone read the article I linked by John Mark Reynolds? Including Obama on the ‘Obama Doctrine’? Politicians are experts [...]