Herman Cain: 'I'm Not Supposed To Know Anything About Foreign Policy'

'I'm Not Supposed To Know Anything About Foreign Policy'

Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain defended his foreign policy knowledge following a disastrous editorial board interview where he struggled to answer a question on Libya.

"I'm not supposed to know anything about foreign policy. Just thought I'd throw that out," he said to a Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel reporter while on his campaign bus on Monday, the afternoon after his interview with the paper's editorial board. "I want to talk to commanders on the ground. Because you run for president (people say) you need to have the answer. No, you don't! No, you don't! That's not good decision-making."

The former Godfather's Pizza CEO struggled to answer a question on Libya for about five minutes. He repeated that he would have "assessed the [Libyan] opposition differently" without saying how exactly his approach would have been different from President Barack Obama's. Cain also gave confusing answers on collective bargaining.

Cain told the board that he offered the position of secretary of state to 88-year old Henry Kissinger, who had the job in the Nixon and Ford administrations. Kissinger turned him down.

Cain has made multiple foreign policy gaffes during his campaign. When asked whether he was ready for "gotcha" questions in early October, he said, "When they ask me who is the president of Ubeki-beki-beki-beki-stan-stan I'm going to say you know, I don't know. Do you know?" After the exchange, his campaign came up with a list of twenty foreign leaders for him to commit to memory.

The Huffington Post's Sam Stein reported that Cain's campaign manager, Mark Block, a longtime Wisconsin political operative, requested the interview Saturday.

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