Herman Cain’s effective withdrawal from the 2012 Presidential campaign ended one of the more unconventional runs by a candidate in recent years.  Normally, post-mortems of failed candidacies are both an exercise in schadenfreude as well as in the morbid bent of the political psyche, but in this case there is a teaching opportunity.

Mr. Cain entered the race several months ago as a successful businessman and political outsider and caught the imagination and interest of Republicans desperately seeking any semblance of a true conservative. Over time, he caught and surpassed the favorite, Mitt Romney, in polls of Republican voters.  But a tsunami of allegations regarding both sexual harassment as well as an extramarital affair ultimately made him drop out.  Given the ham-handed approach he had toward his candidacy from the beginning, and the flurry of unpalatable behavior alleged against him as his campaign slogged on, the question of whether he was really serious about running for President has been rightfully raised.  It’s not likely anyone will ever know the answer to such, perhaps not even Mr. Cain himself.  He would not have been the first candidate to air out his dirty laundry in one campaign to clear the deck for a future one, so it would not be shocking to see him back on the political scene at some future point.

But assuming for a moment that he was “in it to win it,” Mr. Cain’s effort gives us a valuable lesson, for both politics as well as life: if you’re going to take on any endeavor of importance, go all in or don’t go in at all.  Assuming even 50% of the accusations of sexual and moral misconduct have some grain of truth, Mr. Cain should have known they would be raised and he should have decided before he entered that he was not ready to, nor could, weather such storm.  In short, his decision to press on with his candidacy displayed poor judgment and was reckless, on the level of a John Edwards or Bill Clinton.

Furthermore, Mr. Cain should be a cautionary tale to any future candidate, whether running for the lofty heights of U.S. President or just county dog catcher, that no misconduct, sexual or otherwise, will likely go unnoticed ever again in today’s highly automated, real-time, gotcha environment.  The days of womanizing with impunity by a politician, a la JFK, are long gone; Bill Clinton ushering such out in grand style right before the full bloom of the internet.

But before we bury a wannabee Caesar, a review of his contribution to the political discourse is merited.  Specifically, his “9-9-9″ tax platform raised the all-too-valid issue that individuals and corporations are overtaxed, unless you get special carve-outs in the tax code via credits and deductions, by virtue of strong lobbying.  Still, his 9% federal sales tax was a plank of his tax agenda that definitely showed his neophyte status as a politician: 9% would merely be a starting point that would only go higher over time for not only the sales tax but the corporate and individual income taxes.  Call it a “reverse divide and conquer” since by dumping much of the income tax burden into his proposed sales tax, it would be easier for the higher tax crew to both have a new tax revenue stream as well as inch the income taxes back up to their original burgeoning levels.  In that respect, he was only 2 for 3 but with a congress whose approval ratings is at 13% and whose good legislation out of all laws passed is far less than his batting average, he deserves an A for effort.

And, of course, as his political body cools, the question becomes who wins and loses over his demise.  It would appear that Newt Gingrich is the early winner collecting many of Mr. Cain’s scattering supporters.  Whether Mr. Gingrich can hold onto his lead is yet to be seen as he has some baggage, both personal and as a lobbyist, that he will have to work through.

President Obama is clearly a loser with this saga ending as he benefits anytime the conversation moves away from the economy and jobs, as Mr. Cain’s side-stories did.

An unlikely possible beneficiary, though, from Mr. Cain’s meteoric rise and fall is the presumptive front-runner and nominee, Mitt Romney.  Conservatives and Republicans in general just don’t get the “warm-fuzzies” from someone who has flailed on matters like healthcare. There is almost the impression that he is a “country club Republican” in the mold of Nelson Rockefeller or George H.W. Bush; a person who is eager to please both the unpleasable media as well as Democrats, while not his conservative wing.  If such is the case, better 4 more years of Obama than further ruining Republican stature as Tom Delay did so ably.  It’s possible, though, that Mr. Romney took to heart the yearning from both Republicans as well as many in the public who are looking for a leader willing to take bold action and go head-on with the liberal government behemoth that was built in 2009 through 2010 when President Obama, Speaker Pelosi and Majority Leader Reid ran the government. There is a demand to dismantle such monstrosity, in the spirit of Ronald Reagan.  That approach would be the best way to get the economy back on track and people working again.

If Mr. Romney’s take-away is a more pro-growth agenda, we can only thank Mr. Cain for such and wish him Godspeed as he and his family recuperate from the barbaric ritual of the Presidential primaries.

-I.M. Windee

This entry was posted on Sunday, December 4th, 2011 at 8:26 pm and is filed under Ruminations. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.