“What would you do, if you were elected, about Aleppo?” MSNBC’s Matt Barnacle asked Libertarian presidential candidate Gary Johnson. The conversation proceeded with the following exchange (beginning with Johnson’s initial response and alternating between Johnson and Barnacle):

“About?”

“Aleppo.”

“And what is Aleppo?”

“You’re kidding.”

“No.”

“Aleppo is in Syria — it’s the epicenter of the refugee crisis.”

“OK. Got it. Got it.”

During this moment, it isn’t difficult to imagine Ron Nielson, Johnson’s campaign manager, staring at the monitors behind the scenes at “Morning Joe” in shock at the answer his candidate just gave, no doubt thinking about the metaphorical fires he would soon have to try to put out.

Since the conversation took place on Sept. 8, several outlets and individuals have taken to social media, sharing videos of bombings and refugees in Aleppo that stress the horrifying — attention-needing — situation that is unfolding in the Syrian city.

While this brief exchange shouldn’t (and won’t) bar Johnson from the Oval Office, it does deserve more attention than the sarcastic comedy routines it has thus far faced.

As a Libertarian, Johnson’s presidential campaign is attempting to upend the well-established two-party system in America. Since 1797, according to PBS, there has been a two-party system in one way or another in the United States; at that time, the system pitted the Federalists against the Democratic-Republicans.

The two-party system is so engrained in the United States political engine that there hasn’t been a U.S. president not from one of the two current major parties (Republicans and Democrats) since Andrew Johnson in 1865-69, although Johnson was a Democrat who ran with Abraham Lincoln on the National Union ticket.

Gary Johnson’s campaign, therefore, must be virtually perfect. To have any chance at all, he will have to be so much better, in virtually every sense of the word, than his opponents that the differences are noticeable to the general public. His knowledge base of issues, foreign and domestic, must be so superior to his fellow candidates that it forces voters to literally comment on his political intelligence.

Instead, Johnson has done the exact opposite of what he needs to do with this mistake.

Some may find Johnson’s honesty about his lack of knowledge endearing but the Daily Iowan Editorial Board finds it on Aleppo insulting and, frankly, embarrassing. The Syrian refugee crisis is one of the biggest news stories of this election cycle and has been covered extensively from the beginning.

Hopefully, Johnson’s lack of knowledge on such an important issue — one that affects so many in the United States and around the world — is not an indicator of a greater lack of knowledge. Johnson’s greatest asset in this election is that he isn’t Hillary Clinton and he isn’t Donald Trump. But in order to fulfill that aspect of his appeal, he has to truly be different from these other two candidates. That is, he must be more approachable than Clinton and more knowledgeable and polished than Trump (and less racist, less angry, less brash, and so on — but that isn’t the point of this editorial).

Like every presidential candidate before him, Johnson is by no means perfect, and that shouldn’t be the expectation. But attempting to do something as unheard of as overcoming the two-party system means being a candidate who is equally as unheard of — one who is as knowledgeable as he is approachable, as confident as he is humble, and as honest as he is charismatic.