I was half-heartedly watching the news the other day and caught a little snippet of Herman Cain being interviewed on CBN. I don't know a lot about Cain, but if the little part of the interview I heard was any indication, I probably won't be for him.
The interview got to the point of asking about the media's "gotcha" questions. Cain's response?
“When they ask me who’s the president of Ubeki-beki-beki-beki-stan-stan I’m going to say, 'You know, I don’t know. Do you know? And then I’m going to say, 'how’s that going to create one job?'”
I understand that his focus might be primarily toward the United States and bettering the economy. That's great. He might even be able to accomplish great things. That is, of course, assuming that Congress is not as deadlocked and ineffective as they have been for the past ten to fifteen years. The last part of his statement is absolutely right, but that's never the point of those gotcha questions in the first place. Here's what leads to my unease with his answer:
First, from a psychological standpoint, it's very likely that the questioner already knows the answer. Next, here's more of his statement regarding the same question:
"Knowing who is the head of some of these small insignificant states around the world, I don’t think that is something that is critical to focusing on national security and getting this economy going."
This part of his response is, again, correct. However, he seems overly willing to dismiss these "small insignificant states" and their potential importance to foreign policy issues. Additionally, by seeming to, perhaps jokingly, stress the utter unimportance of these countries by referring to "Ubeki-beki-beki-beki-stan-stan", he's already on a footing to demonstrate to a potential foreign partner in business or national security or other foreign issues that they don't mean as much as other countries.
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