Walter Shapiro on the risk that the GOP Just Might Nominate [Herman Cain] a Candidate Patently Unqualified to Be President:
This is how presidential vetting traditionally works. The press pack pounces on the logical fallacies in a candidate’s positions and the shakiness of his resume. Party elites and top fundraisers then decide, if they have not already, that any candidate subjected to this kind of non-ideological media assault is unelectable. And eventually voters—especially when the calendar moves beyond activist-dominated Iowa—get the message that they are trying to elect a president and not merely thumbing their noses at the establishment.
Since when does it work this way? Certainly not in 2008.
It was the press’ distinct disinterest in Barack Obama’s past and associations which resulted in a temperamentally unfit, economically unqualified, and politically mischievous candidate winning by a sizable margin.
If the good faith of the press is our weather vane, then it’s a foul wind.
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Yawn. Even when our candidates are superbly qualified, a la Palin, they are deemed patently unqualified. Who gives a flying frog farm what Walter Shapiro thinks?
The problem is that Cain is not running against the junior Sen. Obama from Illinois, but the incumbent President Obama who has been in office for four years.
Obama is a lousy president, he can’t admit when he’s wrong, he’s unpresidential, he has a lousy staff, and has a view of the world that is fundamentally backwards. But he and his staff also have four years of experience running an administration, and a compliant press that glosses over how consistently inept they’ve been.
Cain is a capable business leader, has some partially developed ideas about domestic policy, is plain about his disinterest with foreign policy, and would probably inherit a lot of Bush’s staff. I like the guy, but here’s my problem with him: if he hasn’t thought a lot of this stuff through now, when he is surrounded by political veterans who have, how is he going to argue the establishment down? Cain talks about how he’ll have the best foreign policy advisors, which is fine, but that just means we have *no* idea what his actual foreign policy decisions will be. The Cain Doctrine can be summed up as, “uh, I dunno.”
Perry and Romney are both governors who have been surrounded by political people for years, and it certainly shows. But as slippery as they may be, they’ve staked out their positions and they’re very likely to stick to them for four years, which is really all we need. More importantly, they have a network of people who agree with them and have worked with them so their administration is likely to be able to make their promises actually happen, or at least a reasonable facsimile.
Comparing Obama to Bush we get a great example of this problem. Bush had been governor, and was the son of a president himself, and was very familiar with his political team. If you really look at the record, he kept his campaign promises, even the “compassionate conservative” promises that infuriated conservatives. And where Bush had little experience or personal philosophy, foreign policy, his administration’s direction was coopted by the interventionist neo-conservatives. It wasn’t some shadowy conspiracy, rather, they simply had solid arguments based on serious academic studies and their views won the debates. We elected a peacetime president in 2000 who stepped up to the job of being a wartime president to lead us through a historic crisis. But McCain had a very well developed sense of foreign policy and likely would have driven that debate, possibly leading to a very different conclusion.
Obama in 2008 was the other extreme: being very much a political novice, he promised the moon, and he has an extensive list of broken promises, and even his signature legislation completely ran away from him when the establishment got hold of it. He was so bereft of ideas himself that even though the neoconservatives were all thrown out of the White House, his foreign policy has been on neoconservative autopilot, with the occasional nod to reflexive liberal wimpiness.
The trouble is, Obama now has, belatedly, a real set of policies, or at least compromises between strawmen. The fact that they are 180 degrees the opposite from what he initially promised doesn’t seem to matter a bit to his base. Worse, moderates know he has been working on these promises for years, and this time he’s somewhat likely to keep them. He has also heard much of the criticisms of his policies and has poll-tested responses, and will tear into his opponent’s arguments with his usual baritone bomb-throwing. That’s just the reality of what we’re facing in this coming election, and why, as much as I like Cain, we really can’t afford to put an amateur up against Obama.
“Obama is a lousy president, he can’t admit when he’s wrong, he’s unpresidential, he has a lousy staff, and has a view of the world that is fundamentally backwards. But he and his staff also have four years of experience running an administration, and a compliant press that glosses over how consistently inept they’ve been.”
Make up your mind because you can’t have it both ways. Either Obama and his staff are incompetent or he is experienced. If he’s incompetent, then his experience means nothing because the results are what they are. So, your anti-Cain argument defeats itself by its reference to Obama as the “experienced” candidate. Given what you say, Cain will be running against a candidate worse than he is. At least, Cain can admit error.
The only kind of person Shapiro would recognize as “qualified” is a Democrat, and that is the single qualification he will consider. He’s definitely a dead-trees kinda guy.
Dude in Denial Doles out Delusions by the Dozen.
We have a Republican primary here (Michigan) that one no one pays much attention to because the Dems just caucus … .e.g. arm-twisting cum musical chairs 101 … a presumptive blue state in other words. (One that voted Reagan however, back in the day … you never know here)
It’s very simple for me: if Herman Cain is on the primary ballot, I will vote for him. If he is the Republican nominee, I will vote for him.
Why? Simple: He’s the only candidate so far that doesn’t make me feel like they’re soaping up my arse while they speak. If he asked to have a coffee with me, I’d be happy to do so, as well as bring him to my home and introduce him to my better half and our big dogs. I can relate to him.
Call Cain unqualified? Bwahahahaha. Compared to Obama, he’s over qualified times 10. He’s actually done something, built something, and wasn’t born to the manse.
Romney? Sounds like Republican Bill Milliken, the highest taxing Michigan governor ever, Jennifer Granholm’s close tax advisor, and who formally endorsed John Kerry in 2004.
Perry? Can’t stand his little fist clenched “trot” up steps, etc … exactly like the Jug Eared Messiah,and also reminds me of Milliken.
Call me an unsophisticated, even ignorant, voter … but one who always votes.
Kthnxbai … your simpleton in Michigan here.
Do you know who’s going to benefit from the press’s failures in 2008? Historians of the presidency. In 30-50 years there will be a LOT of interesting books about the complete failure of the established electoral system. It takes that long for much partisan silliness to work itself out of academe. (By the way, do you notice how much less frequent one reads articles about polls of historians to determine how bad or how good the current White House incumbent is? I lost track of those during the W years.)
I take from this that the media wants to select our nominee but accepts statements of “hope and change” as the only prerequisite on their side.
If Barack H. Obama was qualified to be president in 2008 then Herman Cain is technically OVERQUALIFIED!
Barack Obama forever did away the the concept of “qualified.” The bar is now set so low that the average stock clerk from Wal-mart is qualified to serve as president.
“good faith” and “press”
Doesnotcomputedoesnotcomputedoesnotcompute
So we are left with the conclusion that Shapiro is either an idiot lacking in any sense of recent historical events, or (my vote) fundamentally dishonest.
With the latest revelation that Romney won’t back Kasich on the Union reform laws that Ohio passed I am really starting to detest Romney. If he’s the nominee it will be the second election in a row where the voters had a choice between 2 Democrats. Makes me want to puke.
The phrase I use is “Romney 2012- Obama’s second term, win or lose.”.
Subotai Bahadur
As I said earlier, Romney is behaving exactly like former Michigan governor William Milliken. He has the same basic born to the mansion roots, leading to vast plans with half vast ideas … all of which sponsor high taxes and political butt kissing.
This story makes me wonder if the press is as unbiased as they claim…
These people have no shame. Absolutely no shame at all.
“non-ideological media assault”
I suppose it’s too bad we still remember Journolist.