Sophisticated Republican national security policy

The biggest threat that he can wrap his head around is a reptile—native to America!—that mostly feeds on small rodents and birds.

“When you’re dealing with Islamic Jihad ... you’re dealing with a rattlesnake.” — former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee
But this is not necessarily Huckabee’s fault—and he’s not alone.

Running a state does not require one to regularly contemplate war or diplomacy in the way that serving in Congress does.

Governors do not, obviously, get to vote on war resolutions or defense spending and because of that, their opinions about foreign policy are infrequently sought, because they are not relevant to their position.

In fact, were a governor to be completely devoid of presidential ambitions, they could feasibly serve two terms at the helm of any of the 50 states without once speaking publicly about the Middle East or Russia—and it wouldn’t actually matter.

And that’s how you end up with moments like the one two weeks ago on This Week, when former Maryland governor Martin O’Malley, looking like a deer-in-headlights, haltingly answered a question about the biggest threat to national security.

“The greatest danger that we face right now on a consistent basis in terms of manmade threats is—um—is—nuclear Iran and related to that, extremist violence,” he said. “I don’t think you can separate the two. I think they go together in terms of natural threats, clearly, it’s climate change.”

His Republican counterparts who would like to be president have been equally unlucky navigating matters of homeland security.

At the Conservative Political Action Conference in February, Scott Walker, governor of Wisconsin, was asked about terrorism.

He responded confidently: “I want a commander-in-chief who will do everything in their power to ensure that the threat from radical Islamic terrorists does not wash up on American soil.”

Then, Walker made reference to his battles with unions—battles in which no one, to my recollection, was beheaded or hit by drones. “If I can take on 100,000 protesters, I can do the same across the world.”

After Crimea was invaded by Russian military forces, New Jersey Governor Chris Christie attended what The New York Times reported was “a confidential meeting of Republican activists.”

At the meeting, he was asked how he would deal with Putin differently than President Obama has, to which he replied by saying Obama’s behavior had let him be pushed around by Putin. “I don’t believe, given who I am, that he would make the same judgement,” he claimed. “Let’s leave it at that.” Christie reportedly did not offer any further insights into his own understanding of the issue.

In August, now-former Texas governor Rick Perry addressed the Heritage Foundation in Washington. He told them he believed it’s a “very real possibility” that ISIS could cross into the United States through Mexico because the border is not secure. “We have no clear evidence of that,” he acknowledged, but “individuals from ISIS or other terrorist states could be” planning to do that or, “they may have already used that.” Perry used this theory to advocate for a border fence.