Cain is making the unusual bet that in a strange GOP primary, he can remain a front-runner without acting like one. In recent weeks, his campaign has taken a few steps closer to normal: It has hired more staff members, brought in experts for candidate briefings and even tried to make Cain sleep eight hours a night. (A campaign spokesman said his Libya response was partly due to the fact that he had slept only four hours the previous night.)
But, for the most part, Cain is still acting like what he was a few months ago: a bluff, confident long shot who doesn’t care much about what he doesn’t know.
And, although his numbers have slipped nationally in several polls conducted since the onset of the harassment scandal, many of his supporters, apparently, agree with him — particularly in crucial Iowa, where Cain remains locked in a four-way tie for first place.
On Tuesday, the candidate took a rare swing through Iowa, an early-voting state where he has been largely absent and where he has built none of the grass-roots organization considered crucial to drawing out caucus-goers. He was met there with more questions about his Libya gaffe, which came during a videotaped interview with the editorial board of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.
Campaigning in Dubuque, Cain was asked how he learns about foreign policy and what he reads to keep informed about the news.
“I’ve had meetings with people like Dr. Henry Kissinger. I’ve had meetings with former [United Nations] ambassador [John] Bolton. I’ve had meetings with people who used to work in the Reagan administration on foreign policy. So there’s a lot of people that have a lot of knowledge, and I meet with them on a regular basis.”
On what he reads, Cain replied: “I read the Wall Street Journal. I read the USA Today. And I read sometimes my local paper. I also read some of the online publications, and I also read some of the special bulletins that I get from the Republican National Committee, which summarize a lot of this stuff.”
He then added, “So trust me.”
At another stop, Cain said he was kidding during the same Journal Sentinel interview when he said he had asked Kissinger to serve as his secretary of state in a hypothetical Cain administration.
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