2008: Palin On Democracy Promotion

In her now infamous interview on foreign policy with Katie Couric, Sarah Palin did sort of attempt to address democracy-related issues for the second time in her life week at the United Nations.  Unfortunately, this instance wasn’t scripted beforehand. Couric inquired as to how Palin would specifically try to spread democracy throughout the world, which specifically yielded the following highly specific response also:

“Specifically, we will make every effort possible to help spread democracy for those who desire freedom, independence, tolerance, respect for equality. That is the whole goal here in fighting terrorism also. It’s not just to keep the people safe, but to be able to usher in democratic values and ideals around this, around the world.”

Couric then pressed Palin on the chance that this could result in unforeseen or unpalatable events, such as the Hamas victory in Gaza’s democratic elections, which Palin countered with:

“Yeah, well especially in that region, though, we have to protect those who do seek democracy and support those who seek protections for the people who live there. What we’re seeing in the last couple of days here in New York is a President of Iran, Ahmadinejad, who would come on our soil and express such disdain for one of our closest allies and friends, Israel … and we’re hearing the evil that he speaks and if hearing him doesn’t allow Americans to commit more solidly to protecting the friends and allies that we need, especially there in the Mideast, then nothing will.”

Which caused Jeffrey Goldberg to, um, rear his head and come into the airspace of his keyboard.