NASHUA, N.H. — Herman Cain’s farther behind in the polls here in the home of the first primary than he is nationally or in Iowa, but he still has high hopes for his chances. 
 
 “Well, let’s just say we always try to come in first,” Cain said after an event in a half-empty hotel ballroom. “But if we come in second, that’s not the end of the world. We still would consider that momentum.” 
 
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 But his first day of campaigning in the state since August will likely make that task tougher. 
 
 Cain’s remark came after he spent the bulk of a 22-minute speech to supporters pushing back on the controversies — sexual harassment, his stumbling answer on Libya on Monday to name two — that have engulfed his campaign. 
 
 Cain himself added a new one Thursday morning when he blew off a scheduled meeting with the publisher, editorial page director and reporters at the Union Leader, the state’s largest and most influential newspaper. 
 
 The cumulative effect has New Hampshire GOP Chairman Wayne MacDonald’s doubts about Cain’s chances growing. 
 
 “It’s political reality that the more you get bombarded by a perceived lack of knowledge on foreign policy, which is obviously critical to the presidency and being the commander-in-chief, whether it’s character issues like sexual harassment or the whole Bill Clinton-type of perception, regardless of what it is it’s going to take its toll,” MacDonald told POLITICO in his Concord office. “You just can’t be having all that stuff come at you without it having an impact.” 
 
 And indeed it has, at least in New Hampshire. While the latest polling by Bloomberg shows Cain in a four-way statistical tie in Iowa, he is in fourth place here with 8 percent support, well behind Romney, Ron Paul and Newt Gingrich. 
 
 At Cain’s Nashua rally, which drew about 250 people to a room equipped to handle at least twice that number, he addressed what he called his “powerful pause that went viral on the Internet,” saying that he can’t be expected to have a deep knowledge of foreign affairs. 
 
 “Who knows every detail of every country of every situation on the planet?” Cain asked the crowd. “Nobody! A leader is supposed to make sure we work on the right problems, we’re assigned the right priorities. Surround yourself with good people, put together plans and lead. We’ve got plenty of experts, and a leader knows how to use those experts. We need a leader, not a reader.” 
 
 But despite Cain’s speech, the headline in the state’s largest newspaper was what the Union Leader dubbed his “no-show” for his sit-down at the conservative daily, which is typically a rite of passage for Republican candidates. 
 
 The Cain campaign’s last-minute decision to back out of the event capped several days of drama as it first demanded C-SPAN cameras be barred from the room, then tried to limit the one-hour interview to 20 minutes — a request the newspaper immediately refused. 
 
 The Union Leader’s endorsement is the state’s biggest prize for Republicans leading up to the primary — now just seven weeks away — and is seen as a conservative stamp of approval elsewhere in the country. The newspaper’s been a powerful force in New Hampshire Republican primaries since that primary took on its crucial role in picking GOP nominees, going back to the days of Barry Goldwater and Ronald Reagan. The newspaper’s 2008 endorsement helped boost John McCain to the New Hampshire win that revived his campaign, and it’s been eagerly sought after by most of this year’s field. ||||| Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain talks with the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel Editorial Board and reporters on Monday. Credit: Mike De Sisti 
 
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 Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain, in the midst of a Midwestern campaign swing, stumbled badly Monday when attempting to answer a question about whether he agreed or disagreed with President Barack Obama's approach to handling the Libyan crisis. 
 
 Meeting with Journal Sentinel reporters and editors before fundraising appearances in Milwaukee and Green Bay, Cain was discussing foreign policy in general when he was asked specifically about Obama's handling of Libya. 
 
 Cain paused for some time, then wanted to clarify that Obama had supported the uprising. Clearly struggling to articulate a response, Cain paused again, saying, "Got all of this stuff twirling around in my head." 
 
 Finally, Cain said: "I would have done a better job of determining who the opposition is. And I'm sure that our intelligence people had some of that information. Based upon who made up that opposition . . . might have caused me to make some different decisions about how we participated. Secondly, no I did not agree with (Moammar) Gadhafi killing his citizens. Absolutely not. . . . I would have supported many of the things that they did to help stop that." 
 
 Cain said the question of America's involvement in Libya was not a simple yes or no question. "I would have gone about assessing the situation differently. It might have caused us to end up in the same place." 
 
 Told that a number of Republican leaders had praised Obama for his handling of the situation, Cain said he wasn't criticizing the president, "I just don't think enough was done relative to assessing the opposition before everything exploded." 
 
 Cain's answer, which began with a discussion of President George W. Bush's foreign policy before the Libya question came up, was recorded on video and posted as part of a series of unedited excerpts on the Journal Sentinel's online site. Each excerpt pertained to a different topic. The video quickly went viral and was linked to and embedded on a number of political websites around the country, as well as national newspapers and nightly cable and network news broadcasts. 
 
 After the Journal Sentinel interview and a fundraiser in Milwaukee, Cain rode his campaign bus to Green Bay's Lambeau Field. As the bus approached its destination, his spokesman began fielding a flurry of media phone calls about his response to the Libya question. 
 
 When a Journal Sentinel reporter riding on the Cain bus asked him about the reaction his interview was getting, Cain responded with a smile and indicated he found the reaction ridiculous. 
 
 "I paused to make sure I didn't say something wrong. The fact of the matter is, I didn't. I didn't say anything wrong . . . but the fact I didn't answer immediately - I'm going to be honest with you, that is silly. That is silly!" 
 
 Said Cain: "I call it flyspecking every word, every phrase, and now they are flyspecking my pauses, but I guess since they can't legitimately attack my ideas, they will attack word and pauses. I'm kind of flattered that my pauses are so important that somebody wants to make a story out of it." 
 
 By the time his bus arrived at his campaign tailgate party at Lambeau, a large media scrum was waiting, and the first question was about the way he handled the question about Libya. 
 
 In the Journal Sentinel meeting, Cain also appeared to be unclear on the issue of collective bargaining as it involves federal employees. 
 
 Asked if he thought federal employees should have the ability to bargain collectively, Cain said: "They already have it, don't they?" 
 
 Told they didn't, he said, "They have unions." 
 
 The American Federation of Government Employees, which represents 600,000 federal government workers in 65 agencies, says that most federal employees don't have collective bargaining over pay and benefits. They do have collective bargaining power over working conditions. 
 
 There are some exemptions to unions in federal government. Air traffic controllers can bargain over wages under a 1996 law that granted full bargaining power to a number of federal workers covered under the Federal Aviation Administration. The U.S. Postal Service, which has hundreds of thousands of employees, has collective bargaining for pay and benefits. But the Postal Service is technically an independent agency of the U.S. government. 
 
 Cain's comments came after he was asked about the battles in Ohio and Wisconsin over public employee unions. Cain was asked whether he thinks public employees should be able to collectively bargain. 
 
 "Yes," he said, "but not collective hijacking. What I mean by that, if they have gotten so much for so many years and it's going to bankrupt the state, I don't think that's good. It appears that in some instances, they really don't care." 
 
 The bottom line, he stressed, was not creating an undue burden on taxpayers. 
 
 Asked about last week's vote in Ohio, in which the state's new collective bargaining law was rejected by voters, Cain said that "maybe they tried to get too much and as a result it failed." 
 
 Asked if the Ohio Legislature had gone too far in stripping collective bargaining power for public employees, including fire and police personnel, Cain said Ohio legislators "may have tried to get too much in one bill." 
 
 Ohio's collective bargaining law differed from Wisconsin in at least one key aspect: Wisconsin exempted police and fire personnel from the law. 
 
 In an interview with the Journal Sentinel last month, Cain said he was "right in the corner of Gov. Scott Walker 100%" in Walker's battle with public employee unions. 
 
 Cain also said he expected no major infractions to be found by an inquiry into a Journal Sentinel report that a nonprofit headed by Cain's chief of staff and deputy chief of staff may have picked up the cost of computers, chartered flights and travel expenses for Cain's campaign. The Journal Sentinel has published internal financial documents by the nonprofit Prosperity USA that said it was owed about $40,000 by the Cain campaign. 
 
 Cain refused to name the law firm he said his campaign had hired to conduct the inquiry. "If there is any wrongdoing, we will correct it. We happen to think, initially, they will not find any major infractions," he said. 
 
 On other issues, Cain said: 
 
 He supported what he called opportunity zones where there would be tax incentives to help the poor empower themselves. He said his 9-9-9 tax plan would allow businesses to get tax deductions to help them rebuild the economy and create jobs. And in opportunity zones, he said, businesses would get additional incentives, such as possibly being able to deduct some or all of their payrolls. 
 
 Several people came to mind that he admired and would consider bringing into a Cain administration if he is elected president. He mentioned former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, U.S. Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.), former Ambassador John Bolton and U.S. Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.). 
 
 Cain singled out Ryan, saying he admired how Ryan put a Medicare reform plan on the table, knowing he would be criticized for it. Asked which job Ryan would be considered for in a Cain administration, Cain declined to say. 
 
 "I don't want to pin it down. I don't want to get pigeonholed," Cain said. 
 
 He welcomed the U.S. Supreme Court's decision to review the health care overhaul law. "I'm thrilled that they are going to look at it sooner rather than later," he said.
– An interview Herman Cain had scheduled with New Hampshire’s largest newspaper fell through today, in what the New Hampshire Union Leader dubbed a “no-show.” Cain’s camp blamed the newspaper. Scheduled a week in advance, the sit-down was originally supposed to be an hour long and aired on C-SPAN. But after Cain’s Libya flub in a similar interview in Milwaukee, the campaign said it didn’t want the interview taped. “Videos are typically used for television and it’s a newspaper,” a Cain spokesman explains to Politico. Cain instead scheduled another event, telling the Union Leader he could stop by for only 20 minutes—which the paper deemed unacceptable. “We can catch Cain anywhere for 20 minutes,” the publisher said; the sit-down interview was intended to “really size up the candidate.” The implication? The interview—which three of Cain’s rivals have already done—is key to nabbing the paper’s influential endorsement.