Over in the Corner, Byron York looks at Huckabee’s unfamiliarity with the recently-released NIE on Iran and concludes, “Beyond doing nothing to resolve doubts about his foreign policy qualifications, the exchange underscores the fact that Huckabee doesn’t really have much of a campaign, in the sense that Giuliani and Romney have campaigns, with teams of advisers and carefully-thought-out policy positions. In important ways, he has been flying by the seat of his pants, relying on his unequaled talents as a retail campaigner.”

Hugh Hewitt calls it “a very disturbing conversation” and declares, “a pretty astonishing admission of cluelessness on the part of Governor Huckabee. And it places the Romney gardener story in its proper context.”

My buddy Marshall concludes, “as the veteran of a whole bunch of campaigns, I can tell you — this isn’t the candidate’s fault. During a campaign, the candidate’s job is to campaign. And that’s what Governor Huckabee was doing yesterday. At this point in the cycle, he was likely up and moving from well before dawn to long after dark. Indeed, he was probably at his first breakfast well before the first newspaper landed in front of his hotel room door. It’s his staff’s job to make sure he’s aware of the top headlines of the day and anything else that happens to be going on. They failed.”