Once again, everyone is focusing on the silliness rather than the important issues. Charlie Gibson's interview last night was very disappointing to me because it featured Gotha! questions while never really pressing the nuances that actually make running the country such a difficult job.

While everyone is focusing on Palin's ignorance over what the Bush Doctrine is, they ignore the fact that she also basically tied American military forces to the whims of Georgia and Israel. When asked about Iran's nuclear potential and whether Israel should be allowed to attack the nuke sites if they felt threatened, Palin said (three times), "We cannot second guess the steps that Israel takes to defend itself." Now, instead of going deeper into this issue, asking where the line is drawn (if it is drawn) in terms of what Israel can get away with in the name of defending themselves, Gibson simply kept asking the same nuclear question over and over. Gibson basically turned the quagmire that is the Middle East into "If Nukes bad, is Israel attack good?"

Charlie pulled the same stunt when discussing Georgia. Rather than go into the intricacies of the situation, he just kept asking if Georgia should be let into NATO and if we should defend them. It's disappointing to see the U.S. and our media focusing on this fight between Russia and Georgia and ignoring the fact that the region it's over doesn't seem to want to be a part of either Georgia or Russia. We'll protect Georgia in the name of democracy but we'll ignore Ossetia and Abkhazia because, well, we'd like to keep Georgia as an ally. This is the same logic that kept the United States from recognizing the Armenian Genocide (and the half-assed thinking that has us arming the Kurds while also looking the other way while our ally Turkey attacks them).

Now I'll admit that I myself don't know all of the details of this story but to simply ask the possible next Vice President of the USA a watered down "So do you think Georgia should be in NATO?" question is embarrassing. If everything was that simple then Sarah Palin could easily be Vice President. Hell, Sarah Jessica Parker could be the VP. But there's more to it than that and we never got the chance to find out if Palin has the chops. While some critics will fault Sarah Palin for sticking with her talking points/pre-scripted answers, the fact is that Charlie Gibson allowed her to by not touchiing on any detail or any nuance.

Even on the issue of gay marriage, Gibson dropped the ball. How? Because he didn't even ask about it. He asked if Palin thought homosexuality was learned or a choice or genetic. First off, that seems like an odd question to someone who subscribes to creationism. Besides that, who cares? It doesn't matter WHY she thinks people are gay, it matters HOW she is going to treat them. Again, Gibson asks a question that has a simple politically correct answer and then skirts the real issues. (And Whoopi Goldberg didn't help matters on The View. When McCain brought up wanting states to decide rather than the court, she brought up the fact that slavery was in the Constitution, rather than the fact that if it wasn't for the Courts, we'd probably still have segregated schools and separate but equal.)

So here we are. Exactly where we were before. The left is ridiculing Sarah Palin while the right is claiming that people are being unfair and picking on her. And honestly, I think both sides are correct.