(Fred Weinberg/The Penny Press) – The post-mortem of the Herman Cain campaign has begun in earnest this week with the Wall Street Journal chiming in that “Cain was as surprised as anyone” at his own success and, thus, was never prepared to actually run for President.
Perhaps that’s true, but if it is, it is a sad commentary on the state of our Democratic Republic.
We live, by choice, far, far away from Washington, D.C.
Northern Nevada—all of rural America, for that matter—doesn’t have its citizens waking up each morning wondering what Washington will do for us each day. (Sometimes we wonder about what Washington will do TO us, but that’s another column.) For the most part, we live our lives fairly independently of what happens in the nation’s capitol.
But that does not mean that one of us is singularly unqualified to become President.
I can name five residents of rural Nevada (I will spare them the embarrassment by actually naming them), three of whom have never held elected public office, off the top of my head who could easily take on that job. And they are not unique.
There are common folks (and I do not mean that in the pejorative) all over this great nation who could easily become President and do a fine job. In fact, Americans have a history of stepping up when the times have required it.
The notion that the ability to run for and win the Presidency is limited to a select few “special” people is ludicrous.
Especially in view of who holds that job at present.
Exactly which of President Obama’s qualifications to become President can’t be matched by thousands of people who live in places like Northern Nevada?
His several years in the Illinois State Senate? His experience as a “community organizer”?
Now the one thing that Barack Obama presents is an outstanding example of what happens when we elect a president who makes a good speech but has no track record of running anything.
That would not have been the case with Herman Cain because a) he has a well defined track record of running things and b) a well-defined political philosophy that everybody understood.
The claim that he, somehow, mishandled a couple of bimbo eruptions, which came without anything but an accusation, explains in great detail how the Barack Obamas and the John McCains of the world keep coming to power. They’re the guys who can withstand not giving up birth certificates and bimbo eruptions until the last vote is cast.
Maybe that’s the way it is supposed to be.
Maybe that’s the test of fire we want our candidates for President to go through.
As for me, I will opt for the debate—really a discussion—that Newt Gingrich and Cain had several weeks ago, which illuminated some fairly deep thinking on the role of the Federal Government in our daily lives and the limits of what a government can do.
As long as we concentrate on the horse race aspect of the election process (“and down the stretch they come”) we will never actually look at what is important in a candidate—on either side of the aisle.
The Republicans place way too much emphasis on whose turn it is. On who has paid their dues.
The Democrats always want to make a point supporting the ideology of one of their support groups with their candidate.
In all that hoo-hah, we forget that what we are trying to select is a CEO and CEOs need to have some experience and some intellectual capacity, but most of all a lot of common sense. And in this case, common sense is defined as a healthy respect for the Constitution and a firm understanding of what limitations that document places on government.
Those are things which, frankly, are not well measured by the media because most reporters and pundits are lacking in at least two and in many cases all three of those qualities.
Take today’s poll: Who should Herman Cain endorse in the Republican Presidential Primary?
Facebook
Twitter
Pinterest
RSS