Herman Cain: Libya

When presidential candidate Herman Cain was in Milwaukee yesterday, he met with the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel Editorial Board.

The Board is most likely thrilled with its "scoop."

From the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel:

Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain, in the midst of a Midwestern campaign swing, stumbled badly Monday when attempting to answer a question about whether he agreed or disagreed with President Barack Obama's approach to handling the Libyan crisis.

Meeting with Journal Sentinel reporters and editors before fundraising appearances in Milwaukee and Green Bay, Cain was discussing foreign policy in general when he was asked specifically about Obama's handling of Libya.

Cain paused for some time, then wanted to clarify that Obama had supported the uprising. Clearly struggling to articulate a response, Cain paused again, saying, "Got all of this stuff twirling around in my head."

Finally, Cain said: "I would have done a better job of determining who the opposition is. And I'm sure that our intelligence people had some of that information. Based upon who made up that opposition . . . might have caused me to make some different decisions about how we participated. Secondly, no I did not agree with (Moammar) Gadhafi killing his citizens. Absolutely not. . . . I would have supported many of the things that they did to help stop that."

Cain said the question of America's involvement in Libya was not a simple yes or no question. "I would have gone about assessing the situation differently. It might have caused us to end up in the same place."

Told that a number of Republican leaders had praised Obama for his handling of the situation, Cain said he wasn't criticizing the president, "I just don't think enough was done relative to assessing the opposition before everything exploded."

Here's video of Cain addressing the Libya question:



Oh, my God! Did you see that? He "stumbled badly."

Blah, blah, blah.

The Journal Sentinel brags about its "gotcha" moment:

Cain's answer, which began with a discussion of President George W. Bush's foreign policy before the Libya question came up, was recorded on video and posted as part of a series of unedited excerpts on the Journal Sentinel's online site. Each excerpt pertained to a different topic. The video quickly went viral and was linked to and embedded on a number of political websites around the country, as well as national newspapers and nightly cable and network news broadcasts.

Oh, good grief.

Who cares?

Why is that part of the coverage?

"Yippee! Our video went viral." That's irrelevant.

How unprofessional!

(The video is no "double rainbow guy.")

After the Journal Sentinel interview and a fundraiser in Milwaukee, Cain rode his campaign bus to Green Bay's Lambeau Field. As the bus approached its destination, his spokesman began fielding a flurry of media phone calls about his response to the Libya question.

When a Journal Sentinel reporter riding on the Cain bus asked him about the reaction his interview was getting, Cain responded with a smile and indicated he found the reaction ridiculous.

"I paused to make sure I didn't say something wrong. The fact of the matter is, I didn't. I didn't say anything wrong . . . but the fact I didn't answer immediately - I'm going to be honest with you, that is silly. That is silly!"

Said Cain: "I call it flyspecking every word, every phrase, and now they are flyspecking my pauses, but I guess since they can't legitimately attack my ideas, they will attack word and pauses. I'm kind of flattered that my pauses are so important that somebody wants to make a story out of it."

By the time his bus arrived at his campaign tailgate party at Lambeau, a large media scrum was waiting, and the first question was about the way he handled the question about Libya.

This is really lame.

Considering Obama can't get out a sentence correctly even when he's using his teleprompter, and considering that he is completely lost without it, I don't think it's fair to give so much weight to Cain's less than entirely smooth delivery when answering the Libya question.

If the JS Editorial Board had asked me the same question, I would have said that it's difficult to discuss Obama's approach to the Libya situation because it was so vague.

He supposedly applied the "lead from behind" doctrine.

Ooh! Lead from behind!

In other words, he dithered and stayed out of the way, then he took credit for skillfully removing Gaddafi from power, killing him.

In terms of stumbling badly on foreign policy, Cain's awkward response is nothing compared to Obama's recent remarks about Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

From Haaretz:

U.S. President Barack Obama mentioned on Sunday morning the embarrassing gaffe that took place on November 3, when what he thought a private conversation between himself and French President Nicolas Sarkozy was broadcast to reporters.

Obama acknowledged the incident but refused to comment on disparaging remarks he and Sarkozy had made about Prime Minister Netanyahu. “With respect to the ‘hot mic’ in France, I'm not going to comment on conversations that I have with individual leaders,” Obama said in Hawaii.

Unaware that a microphone in the meeting room at the G20 summit at Cannes was on , Sarkozy was heard on November 3 calling Netanyahu "a liar" in what he thought was a private exchange with Obama.

"I cannot bear Netanyahu, he's a liar," Sarkozy told Obama, who was also unaware that the mic had been turned on and was being monitored by reporters via the headsets used for simultaneous translations.

Obama didn't exactly defend Netanyahu in that conversation, either. "You're fed up with him, but I have to deal with him even more often than you," Obama replied, according to wire service reports.

Now that is stumbling badly.

I think the Journal Sentinel's gushing over its "viral video" is also a bad stumble.
____________________

Here's video, from FOX6 News: