In an article by Fareed Zakaria in the Washington Post, he states:
Sarah Palin has a suggestion for how Barack Obama can save his Presidency. “Say he decided to declare war on Iran,” she said on Fox News this month. “I think people would perhaps shift their thinking a little bit and decide, well, maybe he’s tougher than we think he is today.” Such talk is in the air again. Palin was picking up the idea from Daniel Pipes, a neoconservative Middle East expert who suggested a strike would reverse Obama’s political fortunes. (Actually, Palin attributed the idea to Patrick Buchanan, but she obviously entirely misread Buchanan’s column, which opposed Pipes’s suggestion. It’s getting tiresome to keep pointing out her serial gaffes, but Palin does appear to be running for President.)
Having actually read Pat Buchanan’s column, it is clear that he is against going to war with Iran, which Sarah Palin never denied. It is equally clear that he believes that it would indeed, as Sarah Palin averrs, raise Obama’s standing with the public. Here is a quote from Buchanan’s column:
And should war come, that would be the end of GOP dreams of adding three-dozen seats in the House and half a dozen in the Senate.
Harry Reid is surely aware a U.S. clash with Iran, with him at the President’s side, could assure his re-election. Last week, Reid whistled through the Senate, by voice vote, a bill to put us on that escalator.
Read the whole thing, as apparently Fareed Zakaria has not.
You may believe that Buchanan’s assertion about the prospective increase in Obama’s popularity, due to war with Iran, is dubious. You may agree with Buchanan that war with Iran is inadvisable. You may not like Sarah Palin. Regardless of all of that, it is clear that Governor Palin did not misunderstand or misrepresent Pat’s column, or confuse Buchanan with Daniel Pipes.
It is Fareed Zakaria that has committed a gaffe, not Sarah Palin.