I like Herman Cain but in no way (in my opinion) is he qualified to be president of the United States of America. Being good with the zingers is not a qualification, otherwise we could nominate Billy Crystal or Dennis Miller – or worse, Newt Gingrich.
by Jonathan S. Tobin
Conservatives have spent the last several months chewing up and spitting out a number of Republican presidential hopefuls as well as some who haven’t run. If you eliminate those who haven’t done well when exposed to scrutiny, like Michele Bachmann and Rick Perry, that means Republicans must either make their peace with Mitt Romney or re-examine their misgivings about the other candidates. Given the choices, that’s not much fun. So, it’s no surprise this has led to a second look at some who have very little chance of winning the nomination.
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Thus, Herman Cain’s moment has arrived. His straw poll triumph in Florida over Rick Perry has led some thoughtful writers such as the Wall Street Journal’sDaniel Henninger and our own John Steele Gordon to ask why Cain shouldn’t be given serious consideration. Both buy into the notion electing a businessman without any government experience is a good idea given our economic problems. They rightly point out he has some good ideas about finances. But both also ignore or rationalize Cain’s ignorance about foreign policy while being seduced by the possibility the Godfather Pizza exec could split the African-American vote. While Cain has established he’s good at delivering cliché-laden one-liners in debates, there are still good reasons for conservatives not to waste time on him.
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But that is exactly why Republicans ought not to duplicate that experiment. We’ve just seen what it’s like when you have a president who hasn’t much idea of what he’s doing, so why would a similar fault in a candidate be considered a recommendation? For all of the popularity of rhetoric about our disgust with veteran political hacks, successful presidents have to know how Washington works. Maybe governments ought to be run more like businesses but, like it or not, governments are not the same thing as fast food franchises.
It also bears repeating that despite the obvious emphasis on economic issues this year, a president’s first and most important responsibility concerns defense and war and peace issues. That’s something that even those, like George W. Bush, who entered the office with no thought of devoting much attention to foreign policy, have learned. When he began running for president, Cain’s ignorance of the world beyond our borders was almost complete. He’s uttered some memorable clunkers in which he said we could stop Iran from getting nukes with energy independence, had no idea what the Palestinian “right of return” was, and admitted he hadn’t a clue about what to do about Afghanistan. Since then, he’s cleaned up his act a bit and learned a few one-liners about supporting Israel that he will repeat whenever given the chance. But it’s still fairly obvious he doesn’t have a grasp of these topics. While we may have elected a number of presidents with no direct foreign policy experience, even most of that number knew more than Cain.
Last, there is the idea that Cain could split the African-American vote. But there is no reason, other than Cain’s own assertion to believe that this could happen. Enthusiasm for Obama among his base is probably diminished, but there is no sign whatsoever African-Americans are likely to jump ship even for a black Republican.
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Read the rest: Re: Herman Cain?
For the pro Herman Cain argument we have the following.
by John Steele Gordon
Dissatisfaction with the other candidates and his own strong performances in the debates has lifted Herman Cain from who-do-these-guys-think-they-are territory to a-long-shot-but-who-knows land. Certainly a mark of that new status is yesterday’s Wall Street Journal column by Daniel Henninger.
The main objection to Cain is that he has never held public office. Given the fact that Barack Obama has never held anything but, I’m not sure that that is such a disqualifying attribute.
Potential presidents’ résumés are usually judged according to political experience, executive experience, and foreign-affairs experience. Cain has only the executive experience, and did pretty well at it, according to Henninger. But are the other two so vital? Of the last six presidents, only George H. W. Bush and Obama can claim “foreign-policy experience,” and Obama’s consisted of nothing more than two years as a Senate backbencher (the last two years of his Senate career consisted almost entirely of running for president). Bush II, Clinton, Reagan, and Carter had all been governors.
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So I don’t find Herman Cain’s résumé fatally defective. And his nomination would have two big plusses. One, it would rip the race card right out of the Democrats’ hands and two, it would set up a race between—in Glenn Reynolds marvelous phrase—Cain and Unable.
Read the rest: Herman Cain?
Tags: Herman Cain, John Steele Gordon, Jonathan S. Tobin, Rick Perry
