WASHINGTON – Being glib, Herman Cain’s “Ubeki-beki-beki-beki-stan-stan” comment is finally coming back to haunt him, as it should. In many polls, Cain is either in second place or leading. Considering what happened in Libya today, it matters if a person running to be commander in chief knows the world’s actors.

We can all imagine if Barack Obama had said something like this during the primaries of 2008. Hillary Clinton’s “3 a.m.” phone call ad would have come early and run often.

If Michele Bachmann had uttered such a phrase she would have been run out of the primaries. After all, we are talking about the Republican Party.

Herman Cain got a pass on it when he said it, because no one was taking him seriously. They are now, well, sort of.

Taylor Marsh’s new e-book, The Hillary Effect – Politics, Sexism and the Destiny of Loss will be published in November by Premier Digital Publishing. Marsh is an author, Washington based political analyst, veteran national politics writer and commentator on national politics, foreign policy, and women in power. She has reported from the White House, been profiled in the Washington Post, The New Republic, and has been seen on C-SPAN’s Washington Journal, CNN, MSNBC, Al Jazeera English and Al Jazeera Arabic, as well as on radio across the dial and on satellite, including the BBC. This column is cross posted from her blog.