Herman Cain Exhibits Self-Critical Candor in Explaining Right-of-Return Stumble on Fox News Sunday regarding Palestinian-Israeli Relations Cain isn't the first candidate lacking knowledge he ought to possess on an important issue, but he's one of the few willing to admit such lack of knowledge.
Cain's common-sense answer to the right-of-return question after Chris Wallace explained the term wasn't very different from the actual Israeli policy, which is not that no Palestinian could ever return to Israel regardless of the circumstances but rather that Israel categorically rejects any claim of a general right of return by Palestinians generally.
Herman Cain exhibits something rare in politics-- self-critical
candor in explaining his right-of-return stumble on Fox
News Sunday on Palestinian-Israeli relations in the Middle
East. He also exhibited something not rare in politics-- a candidate
lacking knowledge of an important aspect of an important subject.
(The part of the above
video that includes Cain's admission starts at 3:00)
Some pundits have incorrectly suggested that the answer Cain gave to Wallace (after
Wallace explained Wallace's interpretation of the meaning of the term
"right of return" in such context) somehow contradicted Cain's May 23,
2011 statement to Hannity that his admission of ignorance demonstrates
that he doesn't try to fake knowledge he knows he lacks. An example of
such incorrect analysis is that of Tucker Carlson saying (as a guest on RedEye)
that Cain's answer to Wallace's question (after Wallace defined the term)
was an example of Cain trying to fake knowledge he knows he lacks and that such
answer by Cain thus contradicts his claim to Hannity that he (Cain) doesn't try
to fake knowledge. The reason such contention by Carlson (and others) is
incorrect is demonstrably obvious from any common-sense interpretation of the
colloquy between Cain and Wallace on the subject:
On Fox News Sunday, Cain made it obvious that he was not familiar with
the term when he twice repeated the term as a question to Chris Wallace:
"Right of Return? Right of Return?" That was
candid, not deceptive. Then, after he listened to Wallace's explanation of
what Wallace thinks is the meaning of the term as used in the context of
Palestinian-Israeli relations, he gave an honest, common-sensible answer to the
question as thus framed by Wallace: His answer was that the
Israelis, not the Palestinians, have the right to determine who can enter their
country. He simply did not know that the Israelis have categorically
ruled-out any en-masse "right" of return. (They have not
taken the position that Israel would never permit any Palestinian
to return to Israel-- instead, they've categorically opposed recognition of any general
"right of return" for Palestinians generally-- thus, Cain's
common-sense answer is not very different from the actual position of the
Israelis.)
Thus, common sense supports, rather than contradicts, Cain's assertion to
Hannity that his (Cain's) admission of lack of knowledge in this instance is
consistent with his additional assertion (to Hannity) that he does not try to
fake knowledge he knows he lacks. Thus, in a manner refreshingly different
from the behavior of most political candidates, Cain is Able to be
self-critically candid.
Have there been equally stunning gaps in Obama's knowledge? How about
referring to Corpsmen as "corpsemen" (see video below) for starters-- almost
unforgivable for one serving as Commander in Chief. There are numerous
others, but that's just the first one that comes to my mind. The traditionally
dominant media (ABC, CBS, NBC, PBS, NPR, NYT, WaPo, LaT, AJ&C, MSNBC, CNN, etc)
consistently ignore gaffes by Obama, and they will continue to do so
throughout the campaign from now until 2012, but they will seek to magnify every
such gaffe by every opponent of Obama.
Jim is a proud descendant of 18th Century criminal exiles from England who swam to the Outer Banks when the British ship taking them to a Georgia penal colony sank in a storm near Cape Hatteras. Having the prescience to prevent their descendants from becoming "TarHeels," they immediately migrated to Virginia, where, within just a few generations they worked their way up into poverty. Jim's grandfather was the first in the family tree to see the distant horizons, but his career was cut short by severe injuries he sustained when a cousin cut down the tree.
After a brief stint in the Amry (ours) following graduation from law school, he began his legal career in the state bureaucracy but was never able to break into the federal bureaucracy. Several years later, he entered the private practice of law and co-founded a small law publishing company. Later, finding the publishing of small laws unstimulating and finding his private practice too private to be lucrative, he began writing political satire/commentary. His greatest vice is taking himself too seriously.
Although he regularly teaches Continuing Legal Education courses to lawyers, he's too-often available through he Rubber Chicken Speakers Bureau to speak on politics, satire, etc., at luncheons, dinners, root canals, funerals, etc. His speaking fees are so outrageously high they border on criminal price-gouging, but as a free-market advocate, he defends his fees on the higher moral ground of charging whatever the traffic will bear. For more information (surely more than one would want or need), go to www.PoliSat.Com.