If you’re astounded by Herman Cain’s rise to the top of the Republican pyramid, remember that Americans have long had a soft spot for the mythological outsider who rides to the rescue.

Movie director Frank Capra was great at mining that fantasy, most notably in 1939, when Jimmy Stewart used his aw-gosh gumption to clean up corruption in “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington.” And, far more recently in “Dave,” Kevin Kline played the amiable, innocent owner of a temp agency who accidentally becomes president, brings in his neurotic tax accountant to clean up the federal budget ― and, presto, the world is a better place.

But that’s only reel life. Real life is something else entirely, as evidenced by the current spectacle of a former cola, hamburger and pizza executive outpacing the entire GOP field. Grassroots Republicans, particularly the tea partyers, are apparently so fed up with government that they’re favoring Cain precisely because he has never served a day in government.

The downside, however, is that Cain is profoundly uninformed about the fundamentals of civic and political life. He may have a silver tongue, but there’s a Grand Canyon between his ears.

I suppose Cain’s supporters consider that an asset. But I consider it disturbing, for instance, that Cain would go on “Meet the Press” and declare, “I’m not familiar with the neoconservative movement.”

For his information (assuming that knowledge is still important), the neoconservatives have been driving Republican foreign policy since the late 1970s, arguing that America should aggressively export democracy, even at the point of a gun. The hawkish movement was particularly active early in the last decade, when it helped propel us into Iraq, at a current cost approaching $1 trillion. But it’s immaterial to Cain whether he knows the movement or not, because, in his words, “I don’t believe the war in Iraq was a mistake.”

Maybe Republican primary voters are eager to join Cain in taking a vacation from history. I’m tempted to invoke poet and philosopher George Santayana, who warned that “those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it,” but I assume Cain’s followers would dismiss Santayana as just another smarty-pants elitist.

Is it elitist these days to insist that presidential candidates know the basics about how government operates? For what it’s worth, Cain doesn’t know. This was clear the other day, when he was flailing around on the eternally touchy issue of abortion.

On CNN, he pleased the antiabortion voters when he insisted the procedure should be banned in all circumstances. Minutes later, he angered those voters when he asserted that raped women had the right to choose whether to have an abortion. (“It’s not the government’s role.”) And then, in a Christian Broadcasting interview, he tried to placate those voters by voicing support for an antiabortion amendment to the U.S. Constitution: “If we can get the necessary support and it comes to my desk, I’ll sign it.”

The buzzer just went off.

Presidents don’t sign constitutional amendments. Those measures are enacted by Congress and the state legislatures. I understand that the knowledge of these fundamentals is not required for the marketing of pizza, but presidential candidates have long been required to possess at least a baseline awareness of the civic sphere.

Blissful ignorance can be dangerous, especially on the foreign front. When Cain insists that it’s not important to know who the leader of Uzbekistan is (or, as he mockingly pronounces it, “Ubeki-beki-beki-beki-stan-stan”), he comes off as clueless about the strategic importance of that nation. George W. Bush wanted to use an air base in Uzbekistan to resupply U.S. troops in Afghanistan; Barack Obama has sought to curry favor with Uzbekistan so that America will have a better regional ally than Pakistan. Does Cain know any of that?

Republicans have typically prided themselves on being seasoned foreign-policy stewards ― until now, apparently. I can’t recall the last time party voters anointed a front-runner facing such a steep learning curve. Take the Middle East, for instance. That’s an incendiary region where amateurs need not apply.

Last spring, on Fox News, Cain suggested that maybe the Palestinians should have the right to return to ancestral land that now belongs to Israel; moreover, Cain said of the Israelis, “I don’t think they have a problem with people returning.” Oops, the buzzer just sounded again. Cain got it exactly backward. Israel’s leaders have a big problem with the Palestinian “right of return.” Cain ticked off the Israeli hawks on the Republican right so badly that he had to spin like a weather vane to reinvent himself as an Israeli hawk.

We’ll see whether Cain can score big at the ballot box while knowing so little. In the end, I question whether most Republican voters will opt for someone so ill-qualified. Knowledge still matters. All Capra-esque fantasies aside, determining the price point for pepperoni is no training for running a nation.

By Dick Polma,

Dick Polman is a columnist for the Philadelphia Inquirer. ― Ed.

(The Philadelphia Inquirer)

(MCT Information Services)