US presidential hopeful Herman Cain became flustered yesterday when asked to assess President Barack Obama's policy toward Libya, raising new questions about his command of foreign policy as he lurched over five minutes from awkward pauses to halting attempts to address the issue.
Video of Mr Cain's appearance yesterday before editors and reporters at the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel went viral almost immediately after it was posted online, and drew immediate comparisons to Rick Perry's recent stumble in a debate when he froze in discussing which federal agencies he would eliminate.
At the interview in Milwaukee, after he was asked his thoughts on Mr Obama's handling of Libya, Mr Cain leaned back and appeared to search for an answer: "OK, Libya," he said."President Obama supported the uprising, correct?" he said.
"President Obama called for the removal of Gadafy - just want to make sure we're talking about the same thing before I say 'Yes, I agree,' or 'No, I didn't agree."' Mr Cain said he disagreed with the president's approach "for the following reasons" - then changed course."Nope, that's a different one," he said. "I've got to go back and see.
"I've got all this stuff twirling around in my head," he said.
Some analysts have grown sharply critical of Mr Cain's foreign policy pronouncements in debates and interviews, saying he shows a basic lack of understanding of critical regions of the world. Mr Cain has sometimes fed into this, and in yesterday's interview he said: "Some people want to say, 'Well, as president, you're supposed to know everything.' No you don't."
His comments about Libya came after a string of other provocative remarks about foreign policy and related issues. Those include a statement published yesterday in which the candidate suggested that most American Muslims are extremists; a contradictory answer about waterboarding during a Republican presidential primary debate on Saturday focusing on foreign policy; and his statement that if al-Qaeda or another terrorist group demanded, he would consider authorising the release of every detainee at Guantanamo Bay in return for the release of one US soldier.
JD Gordon, Mr Cain's spokesman and national security adviser, said the candidate had not been at his sharpest in Milwaukee because of a lack of sleep amid a long day of traveling. "We were all going on four hours sleep, so he was tired," Mr Gordon said. "When he got the Libya question, it took him a while to get his bearings on it, but he got the answer right. "
Mr Gordon said Mr Cain repeated several times what he said was the correct answer - that the Obama administration should have done a better job assessing the Libyan opposition to Gadafy and how it would govern.
However, Mr Cain seemed to contradict himself at the end of the interview, when he said, "I don't know that they were or were not assessed."
New York Times