UPDATED! Herman Cain does not understand foreign policy.

CROSS-POSTED AT THE COLLEGE VOICE.


Businessman Herman Cain loves to trumpet his supposedly super-special-awesome business and pizza skills to no end. He believes that his morality is so superior to anyone elses' that we should mold the laws around it. (Even when that "morality" turns into strange conspiracy theories that abortion is a racist plot to "kill black babies" or something.) He also loves to talk about how much he loves the Constitution - well, his version of it. Is there ANYTHING that this perfect candidate isn't good at!?!?!?

The weak spot of the Cain 2012 campaign emerges.

Yes - foreign policy.

It all started a little while back:

That's pretty bad - even Chris Wallace, Sunday news propagandist, seemed taken aback. But, one gaffe hardly means anything, right? Herman Cain can always return to Fox News and easily regain his image as the master of everything right-wing. The relevant part starts at 4:21 :

I'm not a fan of Bill O'Reilly (at all), but credit must be given where credit is due; kudos, Bill. I digress - just take a look at how difficult it was for Herman Cain to answer that direct question concerning Iran. Herman Cain tried to spin it so that he could speak on what he knows - business.

I'm not the only one who has noticed this. Sam Seder, Connecticut College graduate, agrees:


UPDATE 2: He made another foreign policy / pizza comparison.

As I was wrapping up one part of the research for this post, I found the following clip on a site called "Accuracy in Media (AIM)", a right-wing version of Media Matters (but not nearly as good). In an interview with Cain, one of the shills at AIM questions him about his foreign policy.* The rest is gold:

When you actually listen to him speak, you realize that he has no idea, whatsoever, about what he is speaking on. He mentions absolutely no specifics, except for criticizing Obama's decision to end the unnecessary missile system in eastern Eurasia.

Herman Cain will likely not win the nomination, but it is important to note that the right-wing blogosphere and base is going crazy over a candidate who knows virtually nothing about the world outside of the United States. And they don't care.

It's that simple.

UPDATE: Herman Cain seems to agree with my analysis of his foreign policy credentials:

BRODY: Are you ready for the ‘gotcha’ questions that are coming from the media and others on foreign policy? Like, who’s the president of Uzbekistan?… 

CAIN: I’m ready for the ‘gotcha’ questions and they’re already starting to come. And when they ask me who is the president of Ubeki-beki-beki-beki-stan-stanI’m going to say, you know, I don’t know. Do you know?

The fact that Herman Cain sees foreign policy as simply as memorizing peoples' names is more troubling than the fact that he has no problem parading his ignorance around. Yes, I, too, had to look up Uzbeki President Islam Karimov on Wikipedia; there's a difference between accepting one's level of intelligence and being arrogant about one's ignorance. This man is simply unfit to be President.

UPDATE 3: He doesn't know that China already has nuclear weapons:

Cain said part of China’s threat to the United States stems from its attempts to develop nuclear weapons — even though China tested its first nuclear weapon in 1964. 

“Yes, they’re a military threat,” Cain said on the PBS NewsHour, in response to a question from Judy Woodruff. “They’ve indicated that they’re trying to develop nuclear capability and they want to develop more aircraft carriers like we have. So yes, we have to consider them a military threat.” […]

(And for those keeping score at home, China currently doesn’t have any aircraft carriers — so, you know — double oops.)

I cannot honestly believe that anyone takes him seriously on foreign policy matters.

The LOL-moment of the year came in an interview over at Fox News:

[CAIN:] I hope they continue to think that I’m foreign policy dumb, until the right time they will find out I’m not as foreign policy dumb as they think.

Riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiight. (Too bad that Condoleezza Rice does not agree.)

UPDATE 4: Cain recently claimed that he did not need to know anything about foreign policy to be president. Which not only makes sense due to his flip-flop on Iran, but also due to this AWFUL interview concerning Libya:

UPDATE 5: Note to Herman Cain: "American" is also not a language:

Herman Cain managed to offend Cuban Americans and reveal more gaps in his knowledge of foreign policy and U.S. politics during campaign stops in Miami on Wednesday. 

"How do you say delicious in Cuban?" he asked after sampling some Cuban-style coffee and a croqueta at Miami's Versailles Cafe. See the video above. 

The GOP hopeful soon realized the crowd's native language was Spanish, and told them about his anti-tax plan to "pass a new structure called 'nueve, nueve, nueve,'" according to Reuters.

* The aforementioned right-wing shill remarks at 2:06, "totalitarian regimes in Iran, and [...] pseudo-totalitarian in Russia right now, and [in] China, [it's] questionable." HOW IS THAT QUESTIONABLE? Looks as if AIM should join Herman Cain in, at very least, reading some books on the world outside of America.