Herman Cain: Elect Me, Then I’ll Tell You What I Think About Foreign Policy

Doug Mataconis · · 29 comments

Call it a rookie mistake if you like, but Herman Cain’s response to questions about national security policy is, honestly, just bizarre:

GOP presidential hopeful Herman Cain said Sunday he doesn’t have a plan for the war on terror and won’t share his thoughts with voters until he gets into the White House. “The right approach is that the day I’m elected, I would start on that plan,” he told “Fox Sunday News.” Mr. Cain, former Godfather’s Pizza CEO, said he can’t make those decisions until he sees intelligence files that he is not privy to at this point.

This isn’t the first time Cain has pleaded ignorance on foreign policy. During the candidates debate in South Carolina earlier this month, he gave a largely incoherent response to a question about Afghanistan:

And, just today, he clearly flubbed an answer on the question of a Palestinian right of return:

WALLACE: Where do you stand on the right of return? CAIN: The right of return? [pause] The right of return? WALLACE: The Palestinian right of return. CAIN: That’s something that should be negotiated. That’s something that should be negotiated.

This is a Presidential campaign, not amateur hour. Saying “I don’t know” or, worse, displaying complete ignorance on an issue that everyone has been talking about since the President’s Middle East speech on Thursday simply isn’t going to cut it.