Cain deserves frontrunner status
October 14, 2011 — Herman Cain already had one brief presidential campaign under his belt when I met him in 2004, working a Georgia Republican Party convention crowd early in his campaign for the U.S. Senate. As the next few weeks unfold, that’s important to remember: this guy has been aiming for this moment for a long time. Whether many of his supporters in that Senate race would have predicted Cain would one day be the frontrunner in a presidential race, I don’t know, but there were more than a few who thought he should be. Cain finished a distant second to Johnny Isakson in that race, ahead of U.S. Rep. Mac Collins – hardly a discouraging result, given Isakson’s overwhelming advantage. The qualities which have propelled Cain into his unexpected position were readily evident when he worked that crowd in the Senate race. When interviewed, Republicans often say they identify with Cain, that he’s one of them. But it’s a little more than that. No one in that room seven years ago had a shirt pressed as sharp as Cain; no one stood as ramrod straight. Like many African-Americans of his generation, Cain has become “like us” by consciously striving to be better than the rest. If elected, Cain would be the first and probably the last computer science major to become president. That field, a pioneering subject in the early 1970s, has become so ubiquitous the subject has been dropped from college curriculums, and he’s had more practical experience with it than any other candidate. Among a lot of things, Cain has been chairman of the Kansas City Fed and served on the boards of Nabisco and Whirlpool. This is all to say that if the GOP is the business-oriented, anti-Washington party it purports to be, Cain has every right to be the frontrunner at this turn in the race. Aside from Mitt Romney, he’s the only candidate who has any experience outside government worth mentioning in a campaign brochure. And there’s this. As much as conservatives may overenthuse about this sharply-dressed African-American reaching confidently out to them, liberals so far seem to underestimate him, stupendously. It would take a 50-inch plasma to capture the sneer on the Washington Post’s Ezra Klein’s face after the Florida primary, questioning how any voters could give serious credence to the idea of Cain as a presidential candidate. Seriously? In a field which includes Michelle Bachmann and Ron Paul? (Or, if your preferences swing that way, Rick Perry and Rick Santorum?) And would there have been the same reaction if Carly Fiorina were running? If you want to make the case for Cain actually winning the Republican presidential nomination, it begins with the calendar, which continues to creep backward. New Hampshire – where Cain got a rousing reception in the state House the other day – is talking about moving all the way to December. If Cain gets enough of a wind in coming weeks, he conceivably could capitalize on his current popularity before being shredded as badly as Perry has been, and mount a conservative surge past Romney. James Carville once said that business candidates, like bananas, grow rotten over time. In time, it’s going to occur to someone that Cain was the CEO of the National Restaurant Association. That could prompt a closer look at Cain’s immigration policy, which can fairly be described as barking at the Mexicans and leaving things basically unchanged. To the extent the calendar shortens and reduces the possibility of such stories developing, time draws closer to Cain’s side. Is there really much chance of Cain pulling off such a feat? No. With a few qualified exceptions, Republican nomination battles amount to a set-piece battle between a consensus establishment candidate and a more interesting conservative, which the establishment candidate wins. This race smells exactly like that. But this still leaves Cain as the most successful new face in the party and a very legitimate contender for the vice-presidential nomination, which in the long-term prospects for the two parties looms huge. Cain might not capture many black votes from Barack Obama, but every black vote counts this time around. And whether that Republican ticket wins or not, it would open a breach among formerly solidly Democratic black voters that could be years in the tending – especially if white liberals go too far in their contempt for him. He’s a serious candidate, all right. |
