New House Intel Chairman Knows Less About Middle East Than Most MoJoBlog Readers

I’ve long believed that the skills that make someone good at getting elected are not the skills that make someone good at governing. And yet, I’m still a bit shocked and disappointed when I read stories like this one from Congressional Quarterly‘s Jeff Stein. I won’t bother to block quote it because it’s worth reading in full, but suffice to say Stein sat down with new House Intelligence Committee head Silvestre Reyes and asked a series of questions that are right in Reyes’ new wheelhouse: Is al Qaeda Sunni or Shiite? What is Hezbollah? And so on. Reyes, like the Republicans that held his position before him, did very poorly. Demoralizingly so.