In November 1999, presidential candidate George W. Bush sat down for a radio interview. A reporter asked him to name the leaders of Chechnya, Taiwan, India and Pakistan, all of which had been in the news. He could come up with only one.
This was an embarrassing failure. Newspapers editorialized tartly about Bush’s grasp of international affairs. His rivals took him to task, with Vice President Al Gore saying that a president needs “the basic foreign policy knowledge necessary to protect America’s interests and security around the world.”
It’s hard to recall that we once lived in an age of giants who were expected to know the names of foreign leaders. Donald Trump is proof of how much our standards have slipped. He couldn’t find India if you dropped him at the Taj Mahal. Steve Chapman explains.
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