The gaffe isn’t regarding the Taliban. That’s not that big of a deal. There’s certainly a high degree of sympatico between the Taliban and the new Islamicist leaders of Lybia.
The gaffe was in the original question, when he was trying to get the reporter to be more specific. Because he has no experience he didn’t instinctively do what anyone else (including me, to be honest, and I’ve got no experience) would do: take the non-specific question as an open-ended invitation to talk about whatever he wanted to talk about on that topic... which is what he ended up doing but not before getting all muddled about what are the specifics of the question.
Who gives a sh*t, Herman! Just have a bunch of boiler-plate answers at the ready and pass them out like carnival prizes to the bozos who are asking you all these stupid questions.
Forget the Taliban, Cain just is out of step on the whole subject of dealing with the media. Not as out of step as Gov Perry, but out of step nonetheless.
And that’s his real problem.
And that’s what makes him an easy target for the creeps who are masters at “setting the agenda”.
Your post actually makes a really good point.