December 6, 2007

Huck and the NIE again

Crooks and Liars � Huckabee flubs NIE test - again: "This week, for example, Huckabee was asked for his thoughts about the National Intelligence Estimate on Iran, arguably the biggest foreign policy news in months, if not the year. Huckabee said he’d never heard of it. This morning, on MSNBC, he tried to rationalize his ignorance.

“Well, I don’t blame my staff. It is a situation where a report was released at 10:00 in the morning, the president hadn’t seen it in four years and I’m supposed to see it four hours later.”

That’s utter nonsense, and actually makes Huckabee look even dumber. As Kevin Drum explained, “The NIE was released Monday morning. He was asked about it Tuesday evening. That’s two days. Two days in which the NIE was on the front page of every newspaper; it was blanketing cable TV, talk radio, and the blogosphere; and the president of the United States addressed its conclusions in a press conference. It was blockbuster news on one of the most important foreign policy issues of the campaign and Huckabee didn’t even know about it.”

The phrase “not ready for prime-time” was practically custom made for a guy like this."

1 comment:

steves said...

While it is certainly possible that he could have been so busy that he missed the story, his staff should have briefed him. This was something that was big. I would think that one of his staff would have been trying to keep him up to date.

He would have been better off to acknowledge his error, apologize, and then make an effort to get 'back up to speed.'