Cain’s Knowledge-Deficit Disorder

National Review ^ | November 18, 2011 | Rick Lowry

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NOVEMBER 18, 2011 Cain’s Knowledge-Deficit Disorder He is running for president knowing little about major matters of public import.

Poor Rick Perry. His “brain freeze” is indelible, otherwise it would forever be eclipsed by Herman Cain’s more cringe-inducing meanderings on Libya.

At a meeting with the editors of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Cain was asked whether he agreed with Pres. Barack Obama’s handling of Libya. You would think he had been asked who is the president of Ubeki-beki-beki-beki-stan-stan, Cain’s joshing description of a prototypical gotcha foreign-policy question. What ensued was the longest five minutes of an editorial-board meeting ever.

Cain paused. Then he asked for a lifeline by trying to confirm with his questioner that President Obama supported the Libyan uprising. He started to say why he disagreed with Obama, but stopped after realizing, “No, that’s a different one.” He hesitated again. “Got all this stuff twirling around in my head,” he explained. Cain hadn’t been asked about an obscure conflict or one distant in time. We’re not talking the War of Jenkins’s Ear or the Second Peloponnesian War. He seemed to all but have missed that there had recently been a Libyan War that had taxed the capacities of NATO, created an intense conflict with Congress over presidential war powers, teetered on the brink of failure, and divided conservatives. For Cain, Libya was little more than a rumor of war.

In the hierarchy of gaffes, Rick Perry’s was more forgivable than Cain’s. Everyone has lost his train of thought; few of us have run for president knowing little about major matters of public import.

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http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2012/president/sc/south_carolina_republican_presidential_primary-1590.html

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No big surge here: http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2012/president/sc/south_carolina_republican_presidential_primary-1590.html