And it was eerily reminiscent of watching George W. Bush, circa 2000. ~Steve Benen

How could she not know this? For the same reason I don’t know anything about European football/soccer standings, player trades, or intrigue. I am not interested enough. And she evidently has not been interested enough even to follow the news of foreign affairs during the Bush era. ~James Fallows

Both of these assessments are right, but they point to a more serious danger for Palin and for us than mere lack of interest or ignorance would pose.  Worse than being simply uninterested and uninformed about foreign affairs, Palin is now in a position where she will have to be utterly dependent on the “expertise” of McCain foreign policy advisors for her understanding of these matters, and these just happen to be some of the most irresponsible and dangerous advisors she could have.  As I said at the start of the month:

Folksy governors with little acquaintance with foreign affairs unfortunately seem to make for easy targets for interventionist advisors; their own non-Washington credentials persuade them that they need to listen to “experts.” The “experts,” of course, have their own agenda.    

Benen’s observation confirms my Bush/Cheney-in-reverse interpretation of this ticket, so it is worth revisiting Candidate Bush, the Texan governor who talked about Grecians and was vaguely aware of some general running Pakistan, to remember the laughable arguments made by Bush’s defenders about why his lack of preparation was irrelevant.  Rather like Kagan’s claim that foreign policy elites and completely uninformed people have equally good judgement in guiding foreign policy (a proposition that Kagan and his colleagues do seem to want to vindicate through their own incompetence), Bush’s defenders usually argued that, yes, Bush was ignorant about much of the world, but he would have a team of top advisors who would guide him along the way.  They kept insisting that the important thing was to have someone who could make decisions.  I don’t recall whether they made a point of stressing the need for good decisions or not.  Given the record of the last seven years, my guess would be that they overlooked that part.

This brings us back to the question of experience, or more properly the question of preparation.  Time-serving in Washington may or may not result in acquiring knowledge about policy issues (McCain has been there for decades and has managed to avoid this so far), and this time-serving may often be a very poor sort of experience, since it reinforces all of the worst establishment instincts when it comes to foreign policy.  The necessary preparation for handling foreign affairs can come in many different forms.  Someone whose career and responsibilities are in an entirely different field can take an active interest in foreign affairs and become familiar with the debates, so that he would at least be able to identify the different kinds of arguments he encounters.  What is most important about this preparation is not the paradigm that one adopts or the area of foreign policy that one knows the most about, but having enough knowledge and a critical mind to be able to make one’s own judgements.  The real problem with Palin’s lack of preparation is that she is exceedingly vulnerable to misinformation and ideological agendas because she has no grounded perspective of her own concerning foreign affairs.    

On a related note, it is worth revisiting then-Gov. Bush’s promise of a “humble” foreign policy.  This was the sort of language that originally made McCain the neocons’ favorite in the primaries and misled many conservatives to expect a sane and responsible Bush administration, and it is the promise that many antiwar conservatives cite when they make their own arguments against foreign intervention.  What should have given us all much greater pause then was that Bush argued for the “humble” foreign policy mainly because this was what the realist advisors around him were telling him to say.  This humility was also an obvious complement to Bush’s lack of knowledge, which allowed him to avoid discussing things in detail on the grounds that America should not be as involved in as many foreign crises.  Instead of being reassured by Bush’s reliance on many old Bush administration “realist” hands, we should have seen that as much more of a red flag that he would go in whichever direction the people around him recommended.  The most dangerous thing about an unprepared President is how malleable he is.  What is worrisome about Palin is that if she were to become President she would succeed to the office already in the grip of reckless, jingoistic advisors.  What Bush became in 2002 and afterwards, Palin would likely be from her first day as President.