Sullivan gets it wrong (again).

Andrew Sullivan points out an exchange that occured in Sarah Palin's interview with ABC's Charlie Gibson:

Gibson: The Bush Doctrine, as I understand it, is that we have the right of anticipatory defense. We have the right to preemptively strike any other country that we believe is going to attack us.

Palin: I agree that a president's job, when they swear in their oath to uphold our Constitution, their top priority is to defend the United States of America.

I know that John McCain will do that and I, as his vice president, families we are blessed with that vote of the American people and are elected to serve and are sworn in on January 20, that will be our top priority is to defend the American people.

For some reason, Sullivan ridicules Palin for giving a correct answer:

Actually, the first priority is to defend the constitution of the United States. Palin doesn't even know the oath she is supposed to swear.

Palin is entirely correct here. The top priorities of any president must be, first, to defend the lives of the people of the United States of America; second, to secure and to defend the rights of the people of the United States of America; and third, to defend the constitution of the United States of America.

Under normal circumstances of peace and war, we as Americans believe that the best was to accomplish the first two of these priorities is by accomplishing the third. This belief is justified: the United States under its constitution has historically been supremely able to wage war and to defend itself from attack.