Texas Governor Rick Perry had a famous memory malfunction on national television during a Republican debate last week. That’s bad. That clip will be shown for years. On repeat. Oops.
Herman Cain on Monday an equally absurd, not-famous-at-all intellect malfunction during a sitdown with the editorial board of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. This clip won’t be seen by nearly as many people. It won’t get the SNL treatment. But it’s worse.
Much, much worse.
Because, as you’ll see, Herman Cain can’t answer foreign policy questions that don’t rely on cheap America Rulez/World Droolz slogans. In fact, his entire campaign to this point has been largely built, domestically, on a faulty-yet-catchy tax plan, and in terms of foreign policy, on an “I Haz Hate for Scary Mooslims” platform.
So when pressed on how he would have handled the uprising/intervention in Libya, for example, it’s important to know where this man stands on the issue. What exactly would Pres. Cain have done? What would Pres. Cain have done differently than President Barack Obama?
Well, you know you’re in trouble when you start an answer with “Okaaay, Libya” and then look up to the sky as if to pray to the heavens for a competent, coherent answer. On this day, God did not answer.
In case you couldn’t sit through that, here’s what he said:
Herman Cain’s campaign never had a shot, even when the mainstream media took to calling him the “frontrunner” because of a few polls. If Rick Perry’s campaign ended because he had a brain fart, then Cain’s should similarly be pronounced dead after this clip. You can’t sit there and pull an Eric from Billy Madison on a gravely serious issue and expect to be elected leader of the free world.
Next time, save yourself the embarrassment and just say “I agree with the president in this case.”
Cain’s camp responded relatively quickly, saying “The video is being taken out of context.” Spokesman JD Gordon continued, “He was taking questions for about 30 to 40 minutes on four hours of sleep. He didn’t say anything wrong or in accurate; it just took him a while to recall the specifics of Libya. It just took him a while to gain his bearings.”
Still, it remains unclear after that rambling, incoherent mess of an answer what Cain would do differently. So he thinks Obama mishandled Libya? Got that. How exactly? “The opposition?” What does that mean? The Cain camp says the candidate believes Europeans and NATO should have taken the lead — but that’s really what ended up happening anyway. We’re splitting hairs, no?
But the biggest problem with Gordon’s response is that apparently the Cain camp is unaware that as president Herman Cain will be working on little to no sleep ALL THE TIME.