It was an ABSURD gotcha question.. I doubt obummer knows.
Carson not knowing the Fed Reserve chairman, that was pretty bad
Carson fumbled the ball by not knowing who the Fed chairman is? Yeah, that’s bad.
What is Hugh going to ask in the debate?: “Can you spell supercalifragilisticexpialadocious?”
A brilliant answer
“It was an ABSURD gotcha question...”
I agree. And his answer was not only honest but quite good. The idea that the best president is one who knows who the prime minister of Uzbekistan is, is ridiculous.
The best president is the one that has the right values and has the ability to sell them to the people and the leadership skills to steer the country toward achieving them.
There are plenty of experts who can educate a president in the minutiae of a particular issue. Once he is briefed, given that he has the right values, he will make the right decision.
Why is that an absurd question? If Hillary or Biden gave the dame answer FR would be laughing and trashing them. For good reason. This is the kind of question that SHOULD be asked of our potential president. Not whether they wear boxers or briefs. We have dumbed down this role way too much. These people will not be ready for that 3:00 AM phone call. It’s pathetic.
People steeped in the national political punditry love to pretend that their database is the gate to Mecca. We’ve elected a string of gatekeepers. How’d that work out?
Wanting to know if he knows the difference between Hezbollah and Hamas is a gotcha question? Not by a long shot. I can understand about not knowing some of the more obscure groups and their leaders, but not knowing the difference between Hamas and Hezbollah, not knowing what the Quds force in Iran is, and making some ridiculous comment about all of the players being different in 6 months (when the leaders of many of these groups have been there for years) does reveal a significant lack of knowledge about the Middle East and Islamic terrorism. And his unwillingness to address that shortcoming directly made him sound positively Obama-esque.
I don't expect any candidate to know everything about everything. But I do expect them to be honest about where they are lacking, and at least be able to articulate a reasonable plan of action for getting up to speed. And the Middle East is one of the most important foreign policy messes that a new president will need to be ready to handle.
If Donald wants credibility on these issues, he is going to have to do better than just say he will look for the next Douglas MacArthur...
I think so too. The president’s concern should be to get good people he trusts who know this stuff and can advise him on it as the need to deal with various factions comes up. I bet that Graham knows who Sulemani and Al Baghdadi are but that does not mean he would be a good president.
Hewitt did ask Fiorina and she nailed it. But Walker dodged, and a couple of others, if you read the transcripts, were spoon fed the details in the question. Trump wasn't. So Fiorina, Rubio and Cruz (the last two because of committee assignments and secret briefings) do know this. But if not fed the answers, none of the governor's know the answer.
It was a gotcha, but Trump takes almost every question.
“It was an ABSURD gotcha question..”
I agree. I also admit that I don’t know every faction in the Middle East, the various names of their leaders.
Our own government can’t decide what to call some of them (ISIS, ISIL, for instance).
This is an example of the use of political nuance, and the failure of foreign policy and strategy - that we draw a distinction between an Islamic enemy depending if they are called “Quds”, “Taliban”, “Hezbollah” or “Hamas”. Or if they are “Shiite”, “Sunni”, “Wahabbi”....or if our supposed “friends” are “Saudi Arabia” or “Turkey”.
If we can’t kill enough of our enemies to simplify such a list - then what the hell are we spending $Trillions of dollars in that part of the world?