This Is My Biggest Problem With Cain…

by John Hawkins | November 15, 2011 5:36 am

Herman Cain is conservative, has a successful background in business, is charismatic, tremendously likable — he has a lot of strengths. That’s why it wasn’t a fluke when he moved into first place.

However, it’s also not a fluke that his poll numbers are starting to deflate. The sexual harassment scandal is taking its toll, but it’s actually not the most significant problem with his candidacy.

Let me just say it flat out: There are things Cain REALLY needs to know by now that, for whatever reason, he just hasn’t bothered to study.

Here’s the latest one.

This isn’t a gotcha question about Libya or even a curve ball. It’s just a fat, underhanded slow pitch softball and he whiffed on it badly. This is on top of his blunders on the Right of Return and, excuses aside, China.

Yes, Cain has no foreign policy experience. Yet and still, that’s not an excuse for still getting a flunking grade on foreign policy 101 this late in the race. You can’t expect the American people to vote someone into office who is in effect saying to them, “I don’t know much about foreign policy and I’ll learn it on the job.” It doesn’t work that way.

Moreover, you may say, “Cain will pick it up” — and maybe he will. I certainly hope he does. The problem is that he’s still bombing on questions that he should have had down cold six months ago. That bothers me a lot because Cain is not a dumb guy. We’re talking about an extremely successful businessman and an honest to goodness rocket scientist.

So, that begs the question: If Cain is smart enough to pick this stuff up easily and he should have learned it long ago, why hasn’t he done it already? Perhaps more importantly, if Cain hasn’t done his due diligence yet, even though he has to know it’s hurting his campaign badly, when is he ever going to do it?

If Cain wants to be President of the United States, he can’t afford to keep stumbling on basic foreign policy questions or deferring his answers. Cain needs to up his game on this subject and he needs to do it right now.