Scores of hungry commentators eager for a chance to score a sly lay-up against Sarah Palin, have pointed to her response about the Bush Doctrine last night as evidence that she is not ready to be anywhere close to the Presidency. But William Dyer posting at Hugh Hewitt’s page argues that many of these commentators are exposing their own ignorance and doing exactly what they accused Sarah Palin of doing by coming out with a "top-of-the-head" and pat response to the question without thinking. In fact, argues Dyer, Palin’s response to Gibson’s question about whether she agreed with the Bush Doctrine in the form of a question ("In what respect, Charlie?") may have demonstrated a more comprehensive knowledge of the so-called "Bush Doctrine" than Gibson or, certainly, many of Palin’s too eager critics have shown.

Although the aspect of the Bush Doctrine that is most often invoked in questions about its legitimacy among the media elites is the claim for a right to "anticipatory self-defense," it is not fair to say that this is the sum total of a 31 page policy paper and the experience of the last six years worth of efforts to enforce it. The Bush Doctrine, in the popular imagination, is much more than the sum total of its parts--and certainly much more than an evaluation of one of its parts. Palin was right to press Gibson to clarify--not just for her own sake in giving an accurate and fair answer--but for the sake of the viewers who, whatever James Carville says to the contrary, probably have a broader understanding of the term than he seems to possess.

Several people have linked to this story by Washington Post media critic, Howard Kurtz:

The media are getting mad.

Whether it’s the latest back-and-forth over attack ads, the silly lipstick flap or the continuing debate over Sarah and sexism, you can just feel the tension level rising several notches. . . .

News outlets are increasingly challenging false or questionable claims by the McCain campaign, whether it’s the ad accusing Obama of supporting sex-ed for kindergartners (the Illinois legislation clearly describes "age-appropriate" programs) or Palin’s repeated boast that she stopped the Bridge to Nowhere (after she had supported it, and after Congress had effectively killed the specific earmark).

Glen Reynolds suggests a source for the anger: "I think it’s because they don’t matter as much as they once did."

He’s probably onto something, but there’s more to it. In my experience, the leader of the U.S. media is the New York Times. Other newspapers and TV news organizations read the Times and follow suit. Indeed, TV reporters sometimes learn their agenda for the day by reading the Times. That model worked for quite some time, but it is breaking down. It is now becoming obvious that the "Mainstream media" (MSM) is no such thing. Moreover, thanks to the internet (and talk radio before that, but the internet, by providing more access to independent reporting has helped talk radio make news, rather than simply comment on it), it is getting harder and harder for a reporter to know what’s going on by following only the major newspapers and magazines.

In short, the gate-keeper role of the Times (and in politics The Washington Post) in particular, and of the old media establishment, is dying. Note Kurtz’s comment, "The lipstick imbroglio is evidence that the Drudge/Fox/New York Post axis can drive just about any story into mainstream land." (Mickey Kaus had a very intelligent discussion of this change about a week ago).

But there is one more, and, as far as I can tell, little discussed, element to the story: and that is the human dynamic. Put yourself in the shoes of a reporter for the New York Times or The Washington Post. He or she has worked hard for many years to reach the top of a particular hill. And just when he gets there, he finds that the hill is a much less important one than it was before.

Moreover, he suddenly finds that rogues and upstarts of whom he has never heard, and who have not put the years in, in the blogosphere, are getting more attention, and are more important than he. Combine that with the sad state of the news business, and there’s a real prolem. Each week, he hears of old friends and colleagues losing their jobs because the newspapers and perhaps networks too, can’t afford to pay them. If you’re 45 or so, and have just made it, and perhaps have a couple of kids who want to go to college, it’s going to cause grey hairs and ulcers.

Perhaps that’s partly behind Kurtz’s anger. His own status, as the most important media critic in the U.S., is much less than it was when he got to the top of the heap a the Post.

P.S. This might also explain some of the big media reaction to Governor Palin. She represents all that. She did not work hard in high school to get to a top, Ive league school. She did not go to Washington and work her way up. Instead, she worked in a place they had barely heard of, and yet is jumping past people they know in the climb for status. (The references to Palin’s job as a sportscaster when she was younger fit in here. She was not from the "serious" side of the business.) It’s just not fair.

Update: Byron York notes this comment by the Washington Post’s Marc Fisher:

“In this time of ‘American Idol,’ bedroom bloggers and the belief that experience, knowledge and education don’t necessarily mean a whole lot, Palin is a symbol, a statement that anyone can make it if he or she really tries.

“In this hyperdemocratized society,” Fisher continued, “the national conviction that anyone can succeed is morphing into a belief that experience and knowledge may almost be disqualifying credentials.”

The first snippets of the Charlie Gibson/Sarah Palin interview are now surfacing on the Internet. Palin says that she "did not hesitate" and "did not blink" when she was asked to be John McCain’s running mate because she is ready and you can’t hesitate when you are committed to a mission like this. Good answer. Better yet, she didn’t blink when Charlie Gibson tried to pin her down as a religious wacko. She very calmly (and sensibly) appealed to Abraham Lincoln’s understanding of our duty to be on God’s side in a just cause rather than praying and hoping that He will be on ours. We have a duty to do right, that is all. Normal people get that and know that it is not some Bible thumping call to holy war--much as the other side might wish that it were.

I will have to watch the whole interview (parts will be aired tonight and I think the whole thing will be shown tomorrow) before I can pronounce it an unqualified success, but I have to say that it looks promising--mainly because she just looks so normal, so real. The more her opponents try to paint a picture of her that departs from that obvious reality, the more refreshing her normalcy is going to feel and the better we will all like her. We will know that what they’re really painting is a picture of how they see us and we will know that it is unfair, unscrupulous and--what’s more--it is silly. We are not in a situation where we can afford to listen to the silly people. When November rolls around, we’re going to listen to the conversation at the grown up table.

Jeffrey Goldberg made the case earlier this week: “The next president must do one thing, and one thing only, if he is to be judged a success: He must prevent Al Qaeda, or a Qaeda imitator, from gaining control of a nuclear device and detonating it in America. Everything else — Fannie Mae, health care reform, energy independence, the budget shortfall in Wasilla, Alaska — is commentary. The nuclear destruction of Lower Manhattan, or downtown Washington, would cause the deaths of thousands, or hundreds of thousands; a catastrophic depression; the reversal of globalization; a permanent climate of fear in the West; and the comprehensive repudiation of America’s culture of civil liberties.”

Martin Amis, speaking of biological weapons, made the same point last month: The paths of terrorism and weapons of mass destruction “are visibly inclined, like the sides of a tapering spire. Their convergence is guaranteed by the simplest of market forces. Marginal costs will fall; and demand will climb.” Terrorism could, at any moment, “could go from nothing to everything. After an untraceable mass-destructive strike on one of its cities, what political system would ever know itself again? And all other states would be unrecognizable too, as would relations between them.”

And Benjamin Wittes makes it today: “Eventually, we will face another major attack, because killing large numbers of people is just so much easier than stopping all efforts to kill large numbers of people. . . . [As] hard as it is to remember the reality of the enemy after seven years, it will grow only harder still until the day it all comes rushing back, and we chastise ourselves anew for complacency and failing to heed the warnings that today seem so far-fetched.”

In the past few days, Jim Geraghty has noted a couple of interesting items.

The first is this survey:

"While 82% of voters who support McCain believe the justices should rule on what is in the Constitution, just 29% of Barack Obama’s supporters agree." Their preferred metric? "the judge’s sense of fairness."

On the sex ed bill, it’s possible that Obama had the best of intentions, but the bill text did include, "Each class or course in comprehensive sex education offered in any of grades K through 12 shall include instruction on the prevention of sexually transmitted infections, including the prevention, transmission and spread of HIV." Do kids really need to know about STDs starting at age 5? Isn’t it a strong argument that the "good touch-bad touch" stuff could start that early, but the nitty-gritty about exchanging bodily fluids could wait until the kids are at least a little closer to double digits?

This dynamic reflects a larger idea that has been part of liberalism since the rise of Pragmatism in the early 20th century: no statement ought to be interpreted strictly to the full extent of its logic. Sometimes I wonder if the pragmatic epistemology is behind this idea. On one hand, it holds that the human brain is incapable of grasping certain truth about nature or about right and wrong. On the other hand, it still keeps going as if we really do know what we’re doing and saying.

. . . on Sarah Palin. How interesting it is to note the way that negative female stereotypes ooze from her pen--to say nothing of her striving to live up to them. I have always been of the firm opinion that the true contempt for things female and for femininity comes most often from self-hating "feminists" and, only rarely (and always much more ineffectively) from male Cretans. Note especially the young woman’s twisted yearning for a kind of Hillary as Xena Warrior Princess descending from the sky to save her from the feminine and strong (but I repeat myself) Sarah. And also note the role she assigns to Bill:

It’s true that the last time I had this kind of visceral yearning for a politician to save the day was on the evening of Sept. 11, when the only person whose face I wanted to see on my television was Bill Clinton’s. Perhaps when the Clintons took office in my 18th year, they became imprinted on my brain as my presidential parent-figures, my ur-protectors. But it’s hard not to notice that if that’s the case, it’s Bill I want to nurture and soothe me, and Hillary I want to show up, guns blazing Ripley-style, to surprise the mother alien just as she is about to feast on independent voters, protectively shouting, "Get away from them, you bitch!"

One is tempted to note that the longing for Bill Clinton on the part of so many feminists--the slavish kind of gratitude they have so often expressed (not only forgiving him Monica but offering to imitate her)--may be indicative of a kind of repressed and unfulfilled personal (and feminine) need. But I refrain from saying more out of a desire not to be cruel. And I suppose it’s not fair to express disgust at the visceral reactions some people have in the face of great evil and horror. But I won’t hesitate to note that I had a very different reaction to the events of seven years ago. I can’t speak for her, but I bet Sarah did too.

I wholeheartedly agree with this article, but note the author: Lynn Forester de Rothschild.

It’s been a trying 10 days for Barack Obama’s fans. With characteristic understatement and civility, they are exerting themselves to make clear that the political differences dividing Americans are ones about which decent and reasonable people can disagree:

“We’re coming off the worst eight years in our country’s history.”

Adam McKay, “We’re Gonna Frickin’ Lose this Thing,” September 8, The Huffington Post

[Adam, just to be clear: You’re saying that the past eight years are worse than the eight that included the Depression, or World War II, when 400,000 Americans died, or the Civil War, when 600,000 did? If you really want the gold medal in freestyle hysteria, you can’t hold back like that. Why not double down and say the past eight years have been the worst in any country’s history? What the Germans and Russians endured in the 1930s, the Poles in the 1940s, the Chinese in the 1960s, or the Cambodians in the 1970s is a day at the spa compared to what Americans have gone through since 2000. That’s an approach that will impress undecided voters and Independents.]

“John McCain is running a campaign almost entirely based on straight up lies. . . . [He] is running the sleaziest, most dishonest and race-baiting campaign of our lifetimes.”

Josh Marshall, “Unfit for High Office,” September 10, Talking Point Memo

“If Americans choose McCain, they will be turning their back on the rest of the world, choosing to show us four more years of the Bush-Cheney finger. . . . Suddenly Europeans and others will conclude that their dispute is with not only one ruling clique, but Americans themselves. . . . For America to make a decision as grave as this one - while the planet boils and with the US fighting two wars - on the trivial basis that a hockey mom is likable and seems down to earth, would be to convey a lack of seriousness, a fleeing from reality . . . ”

Picking up on Steve’s "Gaffeology" below, I don’t like saying that I think some of the reaction to Obama’s lipstick comment has been unfair. But I think it has. I don’t think he meant to imply that Sarah is a pig because I don’t think he is accustomed to that kind of speech (at least not in public--though he’s got some even more interesting language in his serial autobiography). But it is revelatory, as you say Steve, because he’s also not accustomed to the kind of speech of which the (commonly used--remember Fred Thompson’s use of it) pig in lipstick quote is representative. That is, he’s not used to speaking in the language of the people. He is used to a kind of kingly or professorial speech. So he makes a botch of these lines when he tries to use them. Steve’s right--it shows that he is rattled and it was a "flub" rather than a "gaffe." But I suspect that he is trying to use these lines because of his biggest gaffe of all--and one Steve neglected to mention.

The Thomas Friedman thinks that Obama is no longer connecting on a gut level, is losing his base (never mind losing independents), and he must do something to regain and the L.A. Times news desk thinks it is important to say, on the front page, that the Democratic "campaign has lost its stride," it’s now official: Obama strategists are full of anxiety and concern and say they are in need of energy. Cool must become something else. Change is needed in the campaign.

So what are we to make of "lipstick-pig-gate"?

Some "gaffes" tell us something important about a candidate’s character or views. When Jesse Jackson called New York "Hymietown" in 1984 it aroused suspicion of anti-Semitic attitudes, which were confirmed when at the convention Jackson and his forces opposed a proposed plank in the Democratic platform that criticized anti-Semitism. Jackson said such a plank was "unnecessary." Strange, coming from the "Rainbow" coalition guy normally so "inclusive" of any perceived grievance. (Mondale caved on the plank, by the way.)

In 1980, Carter’s increasingly desperate personal attacks on Reagan backfired badly, leading to the media meme that he was "mean." It revealed a self-righteous, nasty streak to Carter’s character that was evident to people who followed him in Georgia. It finally caught up to him in 1980.

Obama’s lipstick-streak yesterday doesn’t really rise to this level. It was clumsy in the extreme, and it suggests he is rattled. But if so I suspect he’ll make more such mistakes, and the cumulative effect will then become more significant. But maybe he will settle down and get his groove back. This one seems pretty small potatoes to me. Michael Kinsley famously remarked that a "gaffe" is when someone unaccountably tells the truth. Not in this case; classify this a "flub" rather than a "gaffe." A "gaffe" in Obama’s case was his statement more than a year ago that he’d meet Admadinewhackjob without preconditions (since modified, of course).