Libertarian presidential candidate Gary Johnson’s candidacy has gone from comical to pitiable. His latest foreign-affairs gaffe? He couldn’t even name the leader of North Korea, Kim Jong-Un, who just yesterday vowed to attack the United States should the Obama administration make “preemptive attacks” on his nation’s capital.
Johnson’s Aleppo gaffe last month (when asked about the crisis in Aleppo, Syria, he responded, “What is Aleppo?”) was inexcusable, but his reasoning was not that he did not know the city of Aleppo. Rather, Johnson explained that he “immediately thought about an acronym, not the Syrian conflict.” He “blanked.” Flubs on the campaign trail are common, and if anything, his comments were comedic.
Shortly after, Johnson successfully made light of his second campaign gaffe when he failed to name a foreign leader he admires. With a blank stare, Johnson said that he was “having an Aleppo moment” and “a brain freeze.” He joked about the remarks later, tweeting, “It’s been almost 24 hours…and I still can’t come up with a foreign leader I look up to.” Again, Johnson drew a fine line between exposing his ignorance and freezing in the national spotlight.
Since then, however, Johnson has demonstrated that he did not “blank” on the topics of Aleppo and foreign leaders — he’s simply clueless with regard to foreign policy.
On Monday, Johnson defended his lack of knowledge by saying, “The fact that somebody can dot the i’s and cross the t’s on a foreign leader’s geographic location then allows them to put our military in harm’s way.” By that logic, then, libertarians within the federal government should refrain from learning the names and location of the states lest they become tempted to impose regulations.
It isn’t funny anymore.