Alex Pappas and Jamie Weinstein of the Daily Caller report:
Almost every day, Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain is handed a one-page briefing from his chief foreign policy adviser on news from around the world.
It’s one of several things his campaign says the former Godfather’s Pizza CEO, who has never held elective office before, is now doing to bone up on foreign policy — especially as he faces a big test in November at a GOP debate on national security issues.
“He’s really getting up to speed a lot more so than people give him credit for,” J.D. Gordon, Cain’s foreign policy and national security adviser who prepares the briefings, said in an interview with The Daily Caller on Monday.
When Alex sent me the article this morning, I replied: “Good Lord! A one-page briefing? Just read the NY Times at breakfast!” The article continues:
“I have no idea what Mr. Cain’s views are other than being generally pro-Israel,” said Elliott Abrams, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, who served as a deputy national security adviser for President George W. Bush.
“He needs to say a lot more to be a serious candidate for Commander in Chief,” Abrams said. “He has been far too casual about this subject and does not seem to be taking seriously his need to explain his views.”
This is what I’ve previously described as the Cult of Experts, “a widespread attitude within the foreign policy/national security elite that expertise is essential in all such matters.” Expertise being the foreign policy specialist’s stock in trade, he esteems others insofar as they are themselves experts, or else demonstrate a seemly deference to such expertise.
But how’s that workin’ for ya? It was experts like Ken Adelman who assured us Iraq would be a “cakewalk.” And as I’ve pointed out, John McCain brought a lifetime of national-security policy expertise to his 2008 campaign, and what good did it do him, politically?
Nevertheless, the thing is what it is, and Cain must therefore spend time acquiring sufficient awareness of these issues in order not to look foolish during the Nov. 15 CNN debate at sponsored by the Heritage Foundation and AEI. Let’s hope Cain’s briefings include the latest from Vanuatu, “Linchpin of the South Pacific.”
