Saturday, October 15, 2011

Are You Experienced?

Presidential candidate Herman Cain is lamented by sundry current pundits as being too inexperienced for national office. That is to say, aside from a failed senatorial primary bid, he has no political experience at all. This is considered a dire defect by the conservative chattering classes presumably because the country's experiment with an individual with a dearth of experience has proven so unsalutary and a lack thereof may be viewed with alarm by the Blessed Independents whose support is always presumed to be entirely crucial to a pres. candidate's ultimate success.

The problem with this line of thinking is that although the present Oval Office tenant may be deemed to have had insufficient political experience a far larger issue is that the current tenant had no experience whatsoever in the field of practical and effective economics, to put it as mildly as possible. It's worse than that really. The One not only had no serious economic experience but he, and most of his cheerleaders, futher presumed that a Niagra of government spending, er excuse me, investment, just had to be the ticket back to economic prosperity.

Not--so--much.

Leads one to think that conventional political experience is firmly on the overrated side. Political experience, for all its vaunted importance ever and always drags along baggage much of which frequently has to be overcome rather than trumpeted. Mitt Romney is a current case in point along with Rick Perry to rather a lesser degree. In any case political experience, i.e. a feel for the log-rolling and glad-handing of congress critters is something that can be bought. Bought in the sense that a president can surround himself with a staff whose talents run in those directions whilst he referees the shoving matches and tries to keep the policy train on its tracks.

It is also odd for anyone to think that the experience of several decades of high level business dealings would involve no politiking. Anyone ever hear of office politics? It can be and often is a frothing snakepit the equal of the national legislatures and requiring the sort of talent of the principals that can only be described as political in nature. By this measure ol' Herm has about as much of that kind of experience as any man standing. As much as anyone, and likely far more than anyone else mired in the GOP primary swamp let alone the current big chair occupant, Cain has the experience, the feel, for practical economics that is desperately needed at the moment.

Regarding Cain's 999 plan it is naturally being attacked by the usual Progressive and leftist suspects but also by most of the GOP primary field as well. A thoroughly Progressive friend has observed that at least Cain actually has a plan which describes no one else in the running. All other candidates, being more or less experienced political animals, know instinctively that once one puts forth any putative plan it will immediately be mercilessly picked apart by one and all other political animals. It would be nice if the critics were offering firm debatable concrete ideas of their own instead of a steady rain of kvetching about how the current system of taxation is unfair and misused. As intimated above the political animal "knows" that in specificity lies danger and so avoid it if they can.

The closest anyone else comes to specifics is Newt Gingrich with his 6-Sigma presentations and, tantalizingly, he is showing unexpected strengths in the polls as of this writing. Newt however, much as I personally admire him, has as big a political baggage train to pull as anyone and is therefore unfortunately hamstrung by it to a considerable degree. Only Cain can claim the mantle of citizen candidate at this time since he has heretofore been "only" a citizen. I and an increasing number of others consider this, as they say in the software trade, a feature and not a bug of Cain's campaign.

Angling a bit off camber from the above discussion I am struck by the notion that a presidential contest between Obama and Herman Cain would well and truly be the very first post racial national contest. In my fevered mind only a race between a black avowed hard-core Progressive and a black with undeniable conservative credentials would set to rest once and for all the idea that African-Americans have insufficient access to the halls of power. Additionally the blithering useful idiots of the left are going to get little traction accusing Cain of being insufficiently black for their tastes. The nitwit parade currently painting Cain as a "Tom" or a "token" better be prepared to endure heaps of deserved ridicule, and a possible well deserved fat lip from the candidate himself.

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