Trump fails the pop quiz

Traffic was horrible yesterday and it took nearly an hour and a half to get home from from my office, doubling the usual commute time. As it happened, I had tuned in to Hugh Hewitt's radio show and so I got to hear Donald Trump's interview with Hewitt as it was broadcast. Let's just say it didn't go so well for The Donald:

“I’m looking for the next commander-in-chief, to know who Hassan Nasrallah is, and Zawahiri, and al-Julani, and al-Baghdadi. Do you know the players without a scorecard, yet, Donald Trump?” Hewitt asked the 2016 Republican candidate, referring to the respective leaders of Hezbollah, Al Qaeda, Jabhat al-Nusra and the Islamic State.

“No," Trump said.

"You know, I’ll tell you honestly, I think by the time we get to office, they’ll all be changed. They’ll be all gone,” he said. “I knew you were going to ask me things like this, and there’s no reason, because, No. 1, I’ll find, I will hopefully find Gen. Douglas MacArthur in the pack.”

Trump said asking him who the key players are was a type of “gotcha question.”

“I will be so good at the military, your head will spin. But obviously, I’m not meeting these people. I’m not seeing these people,” Trump said.

You might remember a related performance back in 1999:

Andy Hiller, political correspondent with WHDH-TV in Boston asked Bush to name the leaders of four current world hot spots: Chechnya, Taiwan, India and Pakistan.

Bush was able to give a partial response to just one: Taiwan.

''Can you name the general who is in charge of Pakistan?'' asked Hiller. He was inquiring about Gen. Pervaiz Musharraf, who seized control of the country on Oct. 12.

''Wait, wait, is this 50 questions?'' asked Bush.

As it happened, Bush became quite well aware of Pervez Musharraf after he became president; they met several times -- Musharraf is on the right in this picture:

Strategery

It is true that presidents have plenty of aides who help them understand who the players are. What Trump needs to understand is that you do need to have an understanding of the issues as well. Hewitt is a conventional Republican and has a fairly well known modus operandi -- he tends to ask lefties if they know who Alger Hiss was, among other things, to establish a baseline of knowledge.

In his time, Ronald Reagan was often considered a lightweight. Old Washington hand Clark Clifford used the term "amiable dunce." Reagan wasn't a dunce, of course. He'd spent years preparing for public office and had served two terms as governor of California before he first pursued the presidency in 1976. He had a deep understanding of conservative principles and he had a consistent worldview on foreign and domestic policy matters. It's possible that Trump has a similar worldview, but he hasn't demonstrated that yet. When the time for actual voting arrives, he will need to show that. The interview with Hewitt demonstrates that Trump has work to do.