Will Foreign-Policy Ignorance Actually Hurt Ben Carson?
The second danger is that voters will actually respond poorly to Carson’s lack of foreign-policy knowledge. That’s not impossible, but it would be unusual. Carson’s appeal has long been built on the fact that he’s a commonsense outsider, not a policy expert. Besides, when has a candidate really been penalized for lacking international acumen? Herman Cain was mocked for joking about “Ubeki-beki-beki-beki-stan-stan,” but it was a sex scandal and not his flippancy about Central Asia that brought down his candidacy. Scott Walker was mocked for saying his battles with unions in Wisconsin qualified him to beat ISIS, but it was fundraising, strategy doubts, and domestic-policy flip-flops that knocked him out of the race.