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Monday, May 23, 2011

THE ONE I DIDN'T MENTION. The Fox News beltway pundits were quick to dismiss the candidacy of Herman Cain on Friday, and Chris (bluffed my way out of Econ 10 at Harvard) Wallace scored at least one gotcha in his Sunday interview when Cain seemed to draw a blank on the term "Right of Return."  Moreover, Fox News Sunday had him scheduled just after Ron Paul in its stated round of interviews with Republican presidential candidates, which is to say they've already pigeonholed him in the "no chance" column, an interview formality to be gotten out of the way before the heavy hitters are invited in.

I understand the FNS reasoning. However...

However, I can also foresee a set of circumstances -- "What ifs," if you will -- that could make Cain a surprisingly strong candidate in both the Republican primaries and the general election. I'll share these so you can think about them, as I am doing.

What if Republicans in the key primary states understand the surprising strength of Herman Cain's bio better than the beltway cynics do?


This the summary intro paragraph of the Wikipedia biography. It already contains more information about him than you ever get on Fox News, which describes him exclusively as the "former CEO of Godfather's Pizza." But there's a hell of a lot more to Cain's background and personal story than that bit of deliberately contextless ephemera. How many of us know anything about Godfather's Pizza, where it is, how big it is, what its history is, etc, apart from the possibly sinister connotation of its name? So Cain is maybe a figure along the lines of Frank Lucas, played by Denzel Washington in American Gangster, a shady inner city type seeking to go legit by starting up a pizza chain? Think I'm overstating? Here's the actual business history, which reads remarkably differently, in context.


Oh. So would it be an unacceptably long waste of words to say "Herman Cain, an executive of Pillsbury Corporation who was responsible for notable turnarounds of two Pillsbury subsidiaries, Burger King and Godfather's Pizza, the latter of which he bought from the parent company and ran successfully for eight years"?

And are you intrigued by the statement "began working... as a business analyst"? I am. Where does that come from? How does a business analyst get to be a major corporate vice president in five years or so? Maybe because he's smart and very well educated? What else they don't tell you about Herman Cain when he shows up to be interviewed.


I grant that these credentials were flashed briefly (and later rather sooner) on chyron during his Wallace interview, but if you'd blinked you'd have missed them. And in a political establishment obsessed with Harvard, Yale, Columbia, and other Ivy League Schools (plus Stanford, Berkeley, and the U. of Chicago), the real significance of Cain's educational credentials may have passed unnoticed. What's Morehouse College? Something even lesser, perhaps, than Sarah Palin's University of Idaho degree in communications or Reagan's Eureka College degree in sociology?  Well, not exactly.


Morehouse is also habitually included in an august list with its own Wikipedia entry:



It's important to note that these schools don't employ, seek, or express any interest in the term "Black Ivy League." If they did, they'd probably also include the small (450 students) West Texas school, Wiley College, celebrated in the movie about that school's great takedown of Harvard in intercollegiate debate in 1935.

What is important is that Herman Cain is part of a truly great American educational tradition that predates Affirmative Action and proves that intelligence, knowledge, hard work, ambition, and strong family values are the true basis of the American dream. Cain took his undergraduate degree in mathematics and his masters in computer science at Purdue, one of the best engineering and applied sciences graduate programs in the nation. He did it on his own. His business career proves that. No corporate diversity program makes men or women profit-loss line managers unless they're the best ones for the job. His career subsequent to 'Godfather's Pizza' demonstrates this aspect of his character many times over:

Cain became a member of the board of directors to the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City in 1992 and served as its chairman from January 1995 to August 1996, when he resigned to become active in national politics. Cain was a 1996 recipient of the Horatio Alger Award.

Cain hosted The Herman Cain Show on Atlanta talk radio station News Talk 750 WSB, a Cox Radio affiliate until February 2011 and serves as a commentator for Fox Business and a syndicated columnist distributed by the North Star Writers Group. In 2009, Cain founded "Hermanator's Intelligent Thinkers Movement" (HITM), aimed at organizing 100,000 activists in every congressional district in the United States in support of a strong national defense, the FairTax, tax cuts, energy independence, capping government spending, and Restructuring Social Security.

The Clintons would later blame "Harry and Louise," the fictional couple in the ads aired by the insurance industry, for undermining health reform. But the real saboteurs are named Herman and John. Herman Cain is the president of Godfather's Pizza and president-elect of the National Restaurant Association. An articulate black entrepreneur, Cain transformed the debate when he challenged Clinton at a town meeting in Kansas City, Mo., last April. Cain asked the president what he was supposed to say to the workers he would have to lay off because of the cost of the "employer mandate." Clinton responded that there would be plenty of subsidies for small businessmen, but Cain persisted. "Quite honestly, your calculation is inaccurate," he told the president. "In the competitive marketplace it simply doesn't work that way.

Joshua Green of The Atlantic has called Cain's exchange with Clinton his "auspicious debut on the national political stage.

Cain was a senior economic adviser to the Dole/ Kemp presidential campaign in 1996.

In 2004, Cain ran for the U.S. Senate in Georgia, pursuing the seat that came open with the retirement of Democrat Zell Miller. Cain sought the Republican nomination, facing congressmen Johnny Isakson and Mac Collins in the primary. Cain and Collins both hoped to deny Isakson a majority on primary day in order to force him into a runoff. Collins tried to paint Cain as a moderate, citing Cain's support for affirmative action programs, while Cain argued that he was a conservative, noting that he opposed the legality of abortion even in cases of rape and incest. Cain finished second in the primary with 26.2% of the vote, ahead of Collins, who won 20.6%, but because Isakson won 53.2% of the vote, Isakson was able to avoid a runoff.

Let's review. He's more than the "former CEO of Godfather's Pizza." He's a man of notable educational accomplishment, at least six different careers -- businessman, lobbyist, grass roots activist, senatorial candidate, columnist, and talk show host -- but he's no rolling stone dilettante. He has a vision of how things ought to be, he has rock-solid principles, and he's determinedly his own man. Hmmm. How does all that match up with anyone we know?

What if the Republicans and Democrats continue to wander in the wilderness without a budget deal, a real plan for reducing the deficit, an effective strategy for reducing gas and food prices, or the beltway pundits' demanded solution for reduction of unemployment and resuscitation of the stricken American economy? Remember the Trump boomlet? He's never held political office either. Yet people responded because they sensed a need for economic and political common sense, er, business sense. Trump failed to sustain his flurry for several good reasons. He's a New Yorker with no real feel for the rest of the country. He's a man who made a huge and frequently imperiled fortune out of an inherited fortune, he's an egomaniac who can't take a joke at his own expense, ever, and as Herman Cain adroitly pointed out, "He's a bully."

If they can overlook all these crippling defects to give Trump an even momentary advantage in the polls, why might they not respond to Herman Cain, who succeeded in business on smarts without contacts or anything but his own brain, character, and determination. If the economy continues to tank, his lack of public officeholding may vanish as a crippling demerit. Nobody knows where the so-called Independents really stand. If the U.S. Government still has no budget in 2012, no plan for forestalling national bankruptcy, the outsider, nonpolitical status may become the greatest advantage of all.

What if the tea partiers, establishment conservatives, moderate Republicans, and even Independents are fed to the teeth with being called racists for their every opposition to Obama policy?

[Really really FUCKING sick to death of malignant libel...]

We all know that opposition to Obama isn't about race. The truth is that a Herman Cain candidacy could be Obama's worst nightmare. Think about it.

Let's get the MSM spin out of the way immediately. For sure, they'll try to attack Herman Cain as a Clarence Thomas Uncle Tom, a Republican stooge standing in the way of the One, the Obama.


But would it work?

It would be risky risky business. Risky risky risky business. If tea-partiers and flyover country conservatives coalesced behind Cain, racism would be off the table except for the left-wing 30 percent, despite the fact that they control the media and the academic and pundit classes. The incredible racial ugliness everyone is expecting in the 2012 campaign would be derailed if not silenced (albeit never wholly silenced, so long as lefties live). But the MSM attacks would ultimately fail.



The MSM trying to take out Herman Cain as an Uncle Tom will destroy them forever. Number One. They can't erase the popular support he can receive from Americans between the coasts. Number Two. If they want to take on Herman Cain's Southern Baptist roots, won't that bring up Obama's Reverend Wright connections? Unflatteringly? You betcha. Number Three. If Obama got credit for being a community activist, Cain should get credit for being a far more effective political activist (even if neither held office while they were 'activating'). Number Four. We're listening to what Cain says, not how he says it. But speaking of how he says it, he doesn't have two voices. He doesn't sound white when he's talking to Congress or Brian Williams or Chris Wallace. He doesn't sound like a show-biz, deliberately 'g'-dropping preacher when he talks to the folks. He just sounds like a man from Georgia who knows the difference between speaking dramatically before a crowd and speaking thoughtfully on a cable TV news set. It's a continuum. He's not two different people with two opposite and isolated poles; he exhibits no simple black and white reversals (oops, my PC bad.). He has no chin-up-in-the-air Mussolini pose. He has no Harvard Law School, hectoring, I'm smarter than you and you better not forget it tone. He's a guy whose list of top ten favorite pieces of music would probably have something on it for every American, and it wouldn't be a political lie.

MSM, try telling anyone that this man is not black enough to suit the blackness standard of the New York Times, Rolling Stone, and Al Sharpton. They'll laugh you out of the fucking ballpark. He graduated from the same college as Martin Luther King. He's from Georgia, not Hawaii. He went to graduate school in Indiana, not Boston. He's us in all the important ways and we like him because we know him and what God he believes in and if that's makes us racists for not preferring the new Lincoln Obama, okay. There's no standard of pure blackness Obama can pass that Herman Cain doesn't surpass by a hundred percent. But the more important standard is that of being American. When the dam breaks, when the enemy invades, when the economy collapses, when the tornado strikes, I'd be proud to stand with Herman Cain at the front lines of whatever it is. With Obama I know I'd be expecting an order to sacrifice myself for his excellency. Or to keep from damaging Michelle's shoes.

[Two talk show memes I'm tired of. Imus has moderated his post-bin Laden cheerleading to "I may not vote for him, but I really like Obama. Everybody does. He's a likeable guy. That's got to be a real problem for anyone running against him." And an otherwise estimable local Philly talk show host keeps repeating that "Obama gives a great speech even if he's not too good on his feet." Both points are nonsensical except for the willingness of people who should know better to repeat them. Obama is NOT likeable. He's an arrogant, condescending, jug-eared nerd whom most people would actively dislike in person. And his speechifying triumphs are long done. Any third rate PR guy could pen the empty platitudes that won the first election; when he has to speak for real he gets tentative, inaccurate, and his first instinct is to lie and ridicule those who disagree. Since the ones he's ridiculing are invariably some of us, it's a losing strategy that can't be called "good" oratory.]

In case you hadn't figured it out, I'm rooting for Cain. (I confidently expect that by nine a.m. this morning he knew more about the Right of Return {made up lefty issue that will never get any traction in negotiations} than I ever knew.) He's the most conservative candidate in the race. And maybe, just maybe, the one who has the best chance of winning on the issues.

Can't get excited about boyish wannabes like Romney and Pawlenty. And who else is left?

Maybe the longshot is our only shot. You tell me. But imagine the final What if:

What if the next Reagan is sitting right under our noses. We've been waiting, pining, desperately yearning for him. What if, just like Reagan, he turns out to be the most conservative with the best demographic chance of winning? And What if he turns out to be the inspired one, the one who can grow as he has always demonstrably grown in life, to be the ultimate rebuttal of everything the left has always derogated about what is most American, and thus leads to an entirely unexpected American Renaissance.

It's happened before. How good is your imagination? How strong your faith?

Stronger than dirt, I'm thinking.

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