Barrier to Entry

Herman Cain has decided to suspend his presidential campaign. It's true! Here's a link for people who don't believe the New York Times.

It would be great if he had been forced to pull out because of obvious lack of knowlege on a variety of subjects, especially foreign policy. However, Cain cited the many scandals involving his love life (all of them both false AND untrue, he says) as his reason for quitting. This bugs me, as I've said before - a guy's personal life is messy and shouldn't be a disqualification for higher office, because it doesn't have to interfere with his ability to do his job. In fact, it pretty clearly didn't interfere with Cain's, because he was a very successful businessman in spite of these things.

But now I'm beginning to think I like this state of play in American politics, because big business is one of the only fields that is more corrupt. People can get pretty arrogant when they're CEOs. Being able to buy off any accusers, or negotiate a contract where you get a multi-million dollar bonus even if your company's profits go into the toilet, can make you think you're invincible. You become convinced that nothing you do is wrong, that maybe you're not above good and evil but at least you won't pay any penalties. We don't need people like that running the country.

Humility is a good quality. It checks radicalism.

So maybe the next election cycle we'll have less billionaires buying a spot on the lawmaker express. Who needs that kind of trouble? Less billionaires making laws, less resistance to letting the Bush Tax cuts expire, less public debt for future generations.

Leave Herman Alone!

Pizza magnate Herman Cain has had a rough week. Republicans are attacking him, he is trying to smooth over the discovery of a 20-year-old sexual harrassment incident by Politco, there is a scandal involving the serious misuse of political donations, and he revealed yesterday that he thinks China doesn't have nuclear weapons and he must stop them from getting some.

9-9-9 people! None of that other stuff matters! As president he will work with the congress that is attacking him (whoever is running it by then) to fix the tax code. If there is anything going on internationally, we can just, you know, sit it out for a few years. What this country needs is a guy like Cain, who knows how to create jobs, and put him in a position where he believes that he mustn't do anything to effect the creation of jobs.

Look, if Cain is out of the race, then it's a choice between a centrist who leans to the right and Romney. We can't let this happen. Let it be a choice between a black man with experience in governance and black man without any.

Herman Cain Makes A Couple of Tactical Errors

1. "Some of these idiotic reporters thought I was serious. The joke’s on them. The message was short bills. Understandable bills. No it’s not literally going to be three pages." So from now on, any Cain press conference must be re-vetted by reporters. "When you said X at the beginning, was that literal or a joke? Then in the next sentence, serious? What about sentence 3?"

2. If I followed the argument correctly, the basis for believing Obama is a racist is that he says that some white people harbored racist feelings towards him. So, isn't Cain delivering a racist screed here against John Stewart? Who's not only white, but Jewish?