A lot of people are passing around this clip today of Sarah Palin’s deer-in-the-headlights, fishing-for-a-hint, can-I-phone-a-friend response to Charlie Gibson’s inquiry on the Bush Doctrine:

Seeing as how the Bush Doctrine is inarguably the greatest fundamental shift in American foreign policy since World War II, it’s simply impossible to defend her lack of knowledge on the subject. I saw a McCain aide on CNN today say that if you asked everyone in the Pentagon and State Department what the Bush Doctrine is, most wouldn’t know. So it’s okay for the vice president not to know either (though you have to ask, if the vice president, the State Department, and the Pentagon shouldn’t be expected to know what the Bush Doctrine is, who should?). Not only is that a ridiculous defense, but let’s be clear, if you’re working in America’s State Department and you don’t know what the Bush Doctrine is, you should be fired yesterday. That’s the equivalent of a presidential candidate not knowing how to use a computer.

But let’s back up for a moment. You absolutely must watch the full Palin interview.

The first thing I noticed was her body language. She’s really, really nervous. Her breathing is shallow, she’s hunched forward in her chair, and maybe this is a consquence of her son’s deployment ceremony earlier in the day, but when pressed on some of the tougher questions, her eyes actually begin to water a bit. This is a woman who is sitting down for the biggest interview of her life, and knows it– and perhaps doesn’t feel entirely prepared. She’s not half as confident on her feet as she is reading a teleprompter (which perhaps stems from her days as a sports reporter), or half as confident as I expected her to be. And it humanizes her, or at least did for me. As much as I dislike Sarah Palin on the stump– the Bridge-to-Nowhere-killing-but-not-really community service snob– I actually felt myself rooting for Sarah Palin here. She looks like a high school student who got called on unexpectantly in class and is trying desperately to recall and assemble the previous night’s cram session into a coherent answer.

Which brings me to the second thing I noticed: her dependence on talking points. When repeatedly pressed about the complex, but widely reported, situation involving Iranian nuclear ambitions and Israeli security, she kept repeating that the United States should not “second guess” anything Israel does regarding its national security, until Gibson gave up and moved on. When stumped on the Bush doctrine, she fell back on something about how bad the terrorists are and how George Bush has kept us safe. When asked about her foreign policy qualifications, she repeated the dubious line about Alaska being close to Russia– though no one, including her, can seem to name a single instance as governor where she actually interacted with the Russian government.

Palin is not an unintelligent woman. I watched her 2006 gubernatorial debate last week on C-SPAN, and she is well-versed in Alaskan politics (although when pressed on her opinion of specific bills, she seemed similarly stumped). Given her intelligence and how hard she’s reportedly been studying the McCain campaign’s flash cards, I expected her to be impressive. I expected her to throw little details (memorized or not) into her answers to show that she had more than just a passing knowledge of at least certain aspects of foreign policy, that she had actually thought deeply and weighed both sides of certain topics. She didn’t do this once. Everything was simplified, black and white, good and evil. The Russian attack on Georgia was unprovoked. Suicide bombers operate solely out of a lack of “options” and “hope.” She isn’t a student of foreign policy, she’s someone doing their best to play the part of one. She’s someone hoping to survive the next two months, hoping to pretend to know just enough to buy herself at least four more years to study.

I realize that most of her support comes from people who care nothing about policy or competence or credentials. They like her. They like her a lot. She’s a fresh face, she’s a strong speaker, she’s a working mom, she’s a hunter, she’s pro-life. For a lot of people in America, these are all that matters. These are the issues. But even for this group, it has to be hard to reconcile the ideal of “Country First” with the reality of a potential vice president who clearly hasn’t given much thought on how to make sure her country remains first in the larger world.