Palin: More on the conservative reaction

I'd like to add National Review's Rich Lowry to the list of intellectually honest conservatives I like to read. He was earlier than just about anybody else on his masthead in admitting, back in 2005 or 2006, that the Iraq War was going badly -- and that it wasn't the media's fault.

Today, he reviews Sarah Palin's performance in the ABC interviews:

The foreign-policy session was a white-knuckle affair. She barely got through it and showed no knowledge more than an inch deep. What she did demonstrate was amazing self-possession. She somehow bluffed her way through the Bush doctrine question. Gibson apparently didn't want to go into full "gotcha" territory by asking flat-out if she knew what it is. And then he muddled things further with his dubious definition of it, so she was never truly nailed and there was enough ambiguity there for conservatives to defend her.

The fact still remains that she very likely didn't know any of the possible definitions of the Bush doctrine. I can't imagine if Obama had picked Gov. Tim Kaine and he had had a similar moment, conservatives would have rushed to say that the Bush doctrine is just too amorphous and complicated for him to know anything about it.

Palin seemed weak on economic and budgetary policy too, talking in the vaguest generalities. She was much better, and positively good, on the social issues—which are dear to her and she's thought about—and anything having to do with her personally or with her record in Alaska.

So Sarah Palin is good at the thing she's interested in, which is social issues. But here's the thing: with some exceptions, there's not much the executive branch has to do in steering the country on social issues like abortion and gay marriage. The biggest thing is to make appointments to the Supreme Court, and those opportunities don't come around that often.

But the executive branch does have a big, day-to-day role in economic and budgetary policy. It does have a big, day-to-day role in foreign policy. What Lowry is suggesting, then, is that Palin's not really qualified to do the job as it exists.

Lowry's still rooting for Palin, of course, and thinks she can study her way into preparation. But this is all rather laughable when we're considering a woman who sneered that a run for the presidency "isn't an opportunity for personal growth." If only she'd blinked and taken her own advice.