Herman Cain Flunks Foreign Policy

By Alan Caruba

It can be argued that domestic affairs are a president’s top priority, but the Constitution expressly puts the chief executive in charge of setting and conducting foreign affairs. It is therefore essential to know if the candidate who wants to be president has a reasonable knowledge of events around the world.

On Tuesday evening I watched an edition of Fox News Bret Beir’s Special Report where Herman Cain was “center chair” as the usual members of the panel got a chance to quiz him and, after he attempted to dispose of the charges of sexual harassment unleashed against him, syndicated columnist, Charles Krauthammer asked a question that dealt with foreign policy.

What would Cain do if Iran was going to unleash an attack on the U.S.? Cain gave a rambling, unspecific answer except to say he’d order an Aegis destroyer into the Persian Gulf to let Iran know he was serious, mentioning something about the use by Iran of missiles. It was distressingly clear that Cain had no more idea what he would do than he had regarding other potential foreign policy questions.

Foreign affairs are Herman Cain’s Achilles’ heel and it has not gone unnoticed by the political press and others. In the October 17 Washington Post, Chris Cillizza took note of Cain’s appearance on “Meet the Press” where he was asked “whether Iran’s involvement in an alleged plot to assassinate the Saudi Arabian ambassador to the U.S. amounted to an act of war.”

Cain replied, “After I looked at all of the information provided by the intelligence community, the military, than I could make that decision.” That is what is known as a lawyerly response. “If, if it’s an act of war, and the evidence suggests that, than I am going to consult with my advisors and say, ‘What are our options”’”

If Barack Obama’s extremely muted response is any indication, there aren’t that many overt options, though one might hope that there are a host of covert ones in the works.

During a PBS interview with Judy Woodruff, Cain was asked about China as a potential military threat to the U.S. At one point Cain said, “They’ve indicated that they’re trying they’re trying to develop nuclear capability…” China conducted its first text of a nuclear device on October 16, 1964. It is estimated to have some 400 nuclear weapons. They are not “developing” a nuclear threat. They are a nuclear threat in the same way as other nations with nuclear weapons. This is why Iran is hell-bent on acquiring its own nuclear weapons.

A man no one could accuse of being anything but conservative, Bill O’Reilly of Fox News, had Cain on his program and, in a segment with Dennis Miller, the show’s comic relief, O’Reilly said, “Look, I like Herman Cain. I like his spirit. I think he presents himself very well. But when he came on The Factor a few weeks ago, he had no clue about foreign affairs.”

Cain lacks a good poker face. When asked questions for which he is unprepared, his eyes begin to blink like a deranged traffic light. He responds with some programmed answer that is often unrelated to the question. He is the proverbial deer in the headlights.

During a recent speech to a Republican audience, he said that so far as he’s concerned, America is Israel’s ally and vice versa. That got the predictable applause. Cain visited Israel in August on a fact-finding tour. He met with a deputy prime minister and the Mayor of Jerusalem.

However, when he was interviewed by Chris Wallace on Fox News Sunday, he was asked about the Palestinian demand of “right of return”, a major divide between Israelis and Palestinians, and Cain had no idea what it was. “That’s something that should be negotiated,” said Cain, grasping for an answer that sounded sensible, but the issue is not negotiable so far as the Israelis are concerned and with good reason. Someone even casually aware of the issues affecting Israel would know that.

Stephen Yates, president of the DC Advisory and former national security advisor to Vice President Dick Cheney, might not be expected to criticize a GOP candidate, but when asked he said of Cain, “These are the kind of questions a leading candidate cannot simply pass to advisors. To date, Cain has not projected command of these presidential imperatives.”

A pizza company executive or one leading a restaurant trade association probably doesn’t need to know much about foreign affairs, but a candidate for President of the United States needs to know more than some hasty daily briefings by his campaign staffers.

Cain dismissed the fact he had no idea where Uzbekistan is or its strategic importance to U.S. foreign affairs. “When they ask me who is the president of Ubeki-beki-beki-stan-stan, I’m going to say, you know, I don’t know. Do you know?” Even Obama knows that a stable relationship with Uzbekistan is regarded as of vital importance to the war in Afghanistan for its airport and as a transit corridor to reduce dependence on Pakistan.

Cain thinks foreign affairs questions are “gotcha” questions, but they may well be the most critical questions a potential president has to understand and answer. It is testimony to the difficulty of these issues that Barack Obama has essentially carried out most of the policies put in place by George W. Bush when it comes to foreign affairs.

Right now Herman Cain is the candidate-de-jour in the polls, but so was Michelle Bachmann and Rick Perry when he got into the race. I like the fact that Cain is a bona fide conservative. I don’t like the obvious fact that he couldn’t find Uzbekistan on the map and probably doesn’t know much else about the world.

On that count alone, I would not vote for him. Republicans have to get over their current love affair with Herman Cain and select a candidate more qualified to lead the nation.

© Alan Caruba, 2011

The Cain Phenomenon

By Alan Caruba

Gov. Chris Christie has dropped out of contention as a GOP presidential candidate. So has Sarah Palin. Fading swiftly is Michelle Bachmann and the others, leaving Mitt Romney, Rick Perry, and to the astonishment of a lot of people, Herman Cain.

What would astonish everyone would be a 2012 presidential race between a mulatto, Barack Obama who identifies with his African-American ancestry and ignores his white mother, and Herman Cain who rarely even refers to being a black American because it is increasingly irrelevant as people pay more and more attention to his message.

Cain would crush Obama. One gets the feeling that he got into the presidential race for that purpose.

Obama’s appalling performance in the highest office has seen his polling numbers decline. Obama is likely to be identified as the “American Idol” candidate who went from the Illinois legislature to the U.S. Senate to the presidency in four years. He is a political aberration, the result of media manipulation, and very bad mistake.

Terence P. Jeffrey, editor-in-chief of CNSnews.com, reported on Thursday, October 6, that “The Obama administration passed another fiscal milestone this week, according to new data released by the Treasury Department. As of the close of business on Oct. 3, the total national debt was $14,837,009,271,196.71—up about $44.8 billion from Sept. 30.”

“That means that in the less-than-three-years Obama has been in office, the federal debt has increased by $.212 trillion accumulated by all 41 U.S. presidents from George Washington through G.H.W. Bush combined.”

Herman Cain is all about fiscal sanity. Herman Cain is about capitalism. Barack Obama is a Marxist.

Cain’s message is beginning to resonate in Republican circles, especially among those who identify with the Tea Party movement.

This is not to say we can rule out Mitt Romney’s candidacy, though it is increasing clear that Texas Gov. Rick Perry is beginning to sound warning bells in the minds of many Republicans as his charm and bravado begins to thin in the wake of his poor debate performances and his unsteady responses to questions reporters pose.

Daniel Henninger, a columnist for The Wall Street Journal, writing on September 29th, gave a brief précis of Cain’s resume in the world of business, asking “Does a resume like Herman Cain’s add up to an American presidency? I used to think not. But watching the American Idol system we’ve fallen into for discovering a president—with opinion polls, tongue slips and media caprice deciding front-runners and even presidents—I’m rewriting my presidential-election software.”

Henninger concluded that “Herman Can is a credible candidate. Whether he deserves to be president is something voters will decide. But he deserves a serious look.”

It is a long time between now and November 6, 2012, but I think Republican and, should he get the nomination, American voters, are going to giving Herman Cain a very serious look.

If Cain is elected, it will mean that a nation that fought a Civil War over slavery and waited another hundred years to finally confer full Constitutional rights to African-Americans will confound themselves and the entire world by putting Cain in the Oval Office.

I am not counting out Mitt Romney at this early point. He has become a very good campaigner. He’s refined his message, he is charming, and he “looks” like the Hollywood version of a president. He’s also a RINO, a very moderate candidate at a point in current history when the nation needs and wants radical change if it is to avert the deliberate destruction imposed on it by Barack Obama.

Herman Cain’s website offers his “999 Plan” and it is worth reading because it represents all the steps that must be taken to take American back from the brink of bankruptcy, from massive unemployment, and a thorough understanding of how to achieve that.

The primaries that lie ahead—Florida would vote next week if it could, followed by all the other states—will be the final determination of who will be the GOP’s presidential candidate. There’s plenty of time left for the fortunes of candidates to shift, but like Daniel Henninger, I am giving Herman Cain a serious look.

© Alan Caruba, 2011

Racism? Depends Who's Talking About It

By Alan Caruba

Recently I stopped by the home of a friend of some forty years to wish him happy birthday. He is a PhD with a long career in the field of human relations. And he is an African-American. As we sat together discussing our lives and current events, I was surprised to hear his wife declare that the only reason everyone is criticizing President Obama was “racism.”

I suggested that even the Congressional Black Caucus was criticizing the President. She dismissed that. Perhaps it has to do with his handling of the economy? No, it was racism, she said. I had to wonder how many other black Americans felt that way and, frankly, I do not have the answer to that question.

In sharp contrast, the news on Saturday, September 24, was that Herman Cain, a candidate for the Republican nomination, had won a straw vote at CPAC Florida, scoring 37.1% over distant runners-up, Rick Perry at 15.4# and Mitt Romney at 14%. Did I mention that Cain is the only black man running against eight white candidates? Or that Florida elected Allen West to the House from a district that is predominantly white?

So, someone, please tell me where is this racism that my friend’s wife perceived? And has President Obama’s race been a help or hindrance? When he was elected the 44th President of the United States in 2008, Adam Nagourney of The New York Times wrote that his election swept away “the last racial barrier in American politics with ease…” At the time, Nagourney noted that “Initial signs were that Mr. Obama benefited from a large turnout of voters, but particularly among blacks.”

By September 2011, it was a very different story. CNSnews reporting an August Gallup poll of 15,343 Americans noted that “only 41 percent said they approved, giving Obama the lowest monthly approval rating of his presidency.” Moreover, “Obama hit his lowest monthly approval among Hispanics during August and tied his lowest monthly approval among blacks.”

“In June 2009 during his first year in office, Obama had 95 percent approval among blacks, 78 percent approval among Hispanics, and 53 percent approval among whites. Since then, his monthly approval has dropped 11 points among blacks, 30 points among Hispanics, and 20 points among whites.”

ABC News reported similar results. In an interview with Andy Kohut, president of the Pew Research Center that had published similar approval ratings he said “Obama is not being judged through the prism of race by white voters. It’s because ‘Hey, I don’t like what he’s doing.’”

It is perfectly understandable that black Americans would want to support the President, but is there a blind spot regarding why his approval ratings are dropping even among blacks? In an interview on CNN with Piers Morgan, the Oscar-winning actor, Morgan Freeman, was asked if Obama had helped the process of eradicating racism or had he made it worse. “Made it worse,” replied Freeman who blamed the “Tea Partiers”, calling Obama’s present problems “a racist thing.”

If that were true, why in late August did an article in Politico report that “prominent black leaders…have turned up the heat on the nation’s first African-American president”? He is widely seen as indifferent to black concerns, but their concern is also about the black voter turnout in 2012.

The Black Congressional Caucus has been increasingly vocal regarding their unhappiness with President Obama. In remarks at its annual Phoenix Awards dinner on September 24, the President said, “I expect all of you to march with me and press on. Take off your slippers, put on your marching shoes. Stop complaining, stop grumbling, (and) stop crying.” It is hard to imagine a white President saying such things as Obama strove to rally his audience.

For anyone familiar with the history of race and politics in America, the loyalty of black Americans to the Democratic Party is astonishing. During the years of FDR’s New Deal, civil rights for blacks were not on the agenda. Even the years following World War Two when two million blacks served in a segregated military, the Democratic Party—especially in the “solid South”—opposed any civil rights legislation. It took the assassination of President Kennedy in 1963 to finally get a bill passed.

For my part, I think Obama has done incalculable harm to any current or future black candidate for the presidency. He had an opportunity to address the nation’s problems of unemployment and debt, and he gave all Americans, black, Hispanic, and white, more unemployment and debt. It’s unfair, but black candidates will likely have to work twice as hard to overcome his legacy.

© Alan Caruba, 2011