WASHINGTON -- Former presidential candidate and pizza magnate Herman Cain gave a classically Cainsean speech Thursday on the opening day of the Conservative Political Action Conference, capped off by an endorsement of Joe the Plumber's congressional campaign in Ohio.
The former Godfather's Pizza CEO was introduced as someone who has never used a teleprompter in thirty years of public speaking. But that isn't quite true. The Huffington Post caught up with Cain after his speech and asked him if he had ever relied on the device.
He used one once, he conceded.
"It was the worst speech I ever gave," said Cain. "It was at a restaurant association board meeting, a restaurant association meeting. And I wrote it out and used a teleprompter. It was the worst speech I ever gave in my life ... I said, 'Never again.'"
"Now there would be circumstances where I might use it," he added. "Where I have to pronounce the name of foreign dictators correctly. But for most of the issues, no."
After a brief pause in conversation, the former candidate abruptly attempted to gloss over one of his campaign's greatest gaffes.
"And there is a Ubeki-beki-beki-beki-beki-stan," he said, referencing the fictional country he named as evidence of his own foreign policy ignorance. "There really is one."