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Posted on 10/28/2011 9:55:58 AM PDT by Cincinatus' Wife
There is no better testament to the marketing prowess of Herman Cain than that he gets applause when he tells audiences he’s not a politician — in the course of seeking their votes for the highest political office in the land.
Mitt Romney plays a version of the same card, arguing that “career politicians got us into this mess, and they simply don’t know how to get us out."
If Cain and Romney think so poorly of politics as a vocation, they could easily save themselves from any further taint. They could drop their arduous schedules, their fundraising pleas, their very public roles that open them up to ridicule and attack, and return to comfortable lives that would be welcomed by the vast majority of Americans who don’t thirst after political distinction.
Of course, neither will fold up shop until it becomes impossible to go on, or he succeeds. They don’t have the courage of what they want us to believe are their anti-politician convictions.
Cain’s status as a non-officeholder is entirely an accident of the poor judgment of Republican primary voters in his state of Georgia. He ran for the nomination to the U.S. Senate in 2004. He lost. Had he won, he might well be in his seventh year and second term in the Senate, where politicians go to live out their days blissfully free of any serious responsibilities. Even politicians find the Senate stifling and unproductive, so it’s an odd place for Herman Cain — man of action and scourge of the politician — to have wanted to land.
Romney avoided becoming a career politician by a similar route. He ran for the U.S. Senate in Massachusetts in 1994 and lost, ran for governor of the state in 2002 and served one term before setting his sights on higher office, and ran for the Republican nomination for president in 2008 and lost. He’s been running for president ever since. All in all, he’s made a pretty good political career out of not being a career politician.
The business experience of a Cain or a Romney is enriching, no doubt. They are more impressive for it. But what will be more relevant if Romney becomes president, his time as management consultant or his time as governor of Massachusetts? Romney was a flawed candidate in 2008 and — by most accounts — is a better candidate now. That has everything to do with having acquired more political experience by passing through the fire of running for president once before.
Distaste with the political establishment shouldn’t become distaste for the act of officeholding. Consider the figures the Tea Party admires most. The tea-party standard-bearer Jim DeMint is a former three-term congressman and is now in his second term as a senator from South Carolina. The rising star Marco Rubio spent about ten years in the Florida legislature and served as speaker of the Florida house before winning election to the U.S. Senate in 2010. If business experience were all important, the successful former Goldman Sachs executive Jon Corzine would have been a blessing to New Jersey as governor, and his politico successor — former freeholder, candidate for the legislature, and U.S. attorney Chris Christie — a flat failure.
Amid the slings of outrageous fortune, the politician learns how to inspire and persuade, how to avoid unnecessary minefields and pick his fights, when to accommodate his opponents and when to confront them, how to build a coalition and keep it together. A businessman might have similar challenges, but they aren’t played out in the public arena in the context of a balky, democratic political system that rarely moves on the basis of one man’s orders.
And the businessman’s work doesn’t depend on a philosophical commitment to a set of ideas. The best politicians, like the non-businessman Ronald Reagan, translate their principles into reality in a way that rises to statesmanship. It’s not important not to be a politician; it’s important to be a really good one.
That break in the 1998 election demonstrates the biggest difference between Bush (whom I still thank the Lord for putting him in place on 9-11-01) and Perry: Bush thought if he gave enough, people would like him. He didn’t seem to ever “get it” that the Left would never like him because of his stand on the Lord, the right to life and marriage - and that they never could find some ugly sin in his life.
Perry sometimes bulls on through even though he knows he’s making enemies. He makes a decision and goes through with it until he’s convinced that there is a good argument against it.
I’m afraid that Mr. Cain hasn’t figured out that he can’t govern like a CEO or even the Chair of a Board of Directors. You can’t fire the voters or vote them off the Board.
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Were you responding to me? Because your post had nothing to do with mine. I was commenting on NRO’s twisted and flawed logic, you launched into a candidate comparison. Except for commenting on his tax plan the I have refrained from attacking your candidate. If you would like to have that discussion, however, I’ll be happy to tell you why Cain is my first choice and Perry is my second.
I’m glad I’m not the only one that found the article thick with irony, but devoid of logic.
Herman Cain’s running as a non-politician, because he has never held political office.
But, since he’s running for office that makes him a politician.
Thus, there’s no difference between Herman Cain and Rick Perry—a career politician that has held four different political offices over the last 25 years (a quarter of a century).
Gimme a break.
The cartoon is factually correct.
If they are to raise equivalent revenue, the 999 tax idea and most of the flat tax ideas I’ve seen (there are so many I don’t want to mischaracterize them) lower taxes so much on high earners that it will have to be made up by increasing taxes on low and middle income people.
I don’t quite understand why this is so difficult for many to understand. If I lower taxes for any group, revenue will go down unless I raise them for some other group.
Theoretically you can make a case that eventually the lower taxes will create such an economic boom that revenue will go back up, but that doesn’t change the immediate fiscal implications.
Yes. I was looking for some dialogue.
You totally missed the point of the article.
I agree. I was addressing your statement that nobody was attacking Cain.
Actually, the plan is not “ripped off.” He called in assistance from Steve Forbes, Mill Pass, and Mitt Mulvaney, among others to come up with a plan. His plan was also circulated to select others for comment prior to release.
http://www.cnbc.com/id/44963655
The problem is people who make a career out of elective office. There is something seriously wrong with them and if we care at all about them, we need to help them by voting them out of office as soon as possible.
We need to go back to the George Washington model: he served his time in the military until the crisis was over and he went back to his real life. He served his time as president and then left politics and went back to his real life.
If I were in charge for one day, the first thing I would do is eliminate all pensions for elective office at all levels of government. Elective office is a duty that SHOULD (perhaps must?) be a sacrifice, not a gateway to the good life.
Our problems are due to career politicians like Perry, not career non-politicians like Herman Cain.
Instead of asking why someone like Herman Cain thinks they have a right to run for any political office, we should be asking why does anyone (including Rick Perry) think they should be able to spend their entire adult life in one political office after another?
We need fewer career politicians like Rick Perry, and more people that have never held office before like Herman Cain.
Career politicians are the problem, Rick Perry is a career politician, thus Perry is part of the problem.
The plan includes cuts in spending as well as the tax overhaul. The prediction is that the plan will encourage growth, also, which will increase revenue.
How is making a blanket statement, relevant to Rick Perry's record?
It's a lazy argument.
This from someone that can’t even see the irony in their own screen name.
Cincinnatus was held in such high regard, because he refused to become a permanent politician. When Rome was in crisis, he became the leader of Rome. When the crisis was over, he could have stayed on and become a lifetime dictator. Instead, he stepped down and returned to his regular life.
Between Herman Cain and Rick Perry, which one sounds more like Cincinnatus? The one that has never held office; sees the country in crisis; and is running because he believes he can solve that crisis, or the career politician (state congressman, ag commisioner, governor) that is running for president because it is the next step up from his current office?
You don’t see the ironly of someone with your screen name supporting the career politician?
A lazy argument is not the same as an invalid argument.
There are plenty of lazy, easy to make arguments that are perfectly valid.
The permanent political class are the ones that have gotten us into the mess we’re in today. It’s perfectly reasonable to ask why a member of the class that got us into this mess should be the prefered person to get us out of it.
How is making a blanket statement, relevant to Rick Perry's record? It's a lazy argument.
Actually, the article never mentions Rick Perry, it only makes the convoluted argument that career politicians are the best candidates for high elected office. Obviously history would tell a different story. It is a truly amazing feat of mental gymnastics to reach that conclusion.
However, this discussion has become about Rick Perry, which the article does not name, yet everyone obviously believes is implied. So then the question is do you agree with the premise of the article that career politicians are the best candidates for high office? Putting aside other factors, is Rick Perry more qualified than Herman Cain, not because he is a successful governor, but because he is a career politician? That is the argument the article makes.
Experience does matter.
And experience is defined as:
(1) holding political office
(2) having accomplished things
If you only define experience as having held political office, then I would question the premise of your argument. There’s a lot more to life that counts as experience than just holding political office.
Why don’t you quit with the Baghdad Nob spamming routine and free up bandwidth on FR?
You want to pigeon hole someone rather than weigh their record to see what they've done while in office. You want to tag someone as "like the others" because it is the talking point of the campaign. As Herman Cain would say, "You are comparing apples and oranges."
I more than implied by my posts after the article because I believe Lowry's OpEd speaks to the statesman Rick Perry is.
So then the question is do you agree with the premise of the article that career politicians are the best candidates for high office?
Lowry doesn't say career politicians are the best, he said the BEST (statesman who have honed their craft) politicians.
That is the argument the article makes.
Read the title and then read the article again with the title in mind.
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