Herman Cain's presidential run: A setback black conservatives?
OPINION - Herman Cain's presidential run burned bright for awhile, but after the missteps, and the scandals, that ended it, will Cain's run be considered a setback for black conservatives?....
Herman Cain’s presidential run burned bright for awhile, but after the missteps and the scandals that led to him suspending his campaign today, will Cain’s run be considered a setback for black conservatives? TheGrio contributor Robert Traynham reflects.
When Herman Cain burst onto the national scene, I’ll admit that I was the first to say that I was intrigued.
theGrio: Cain announces he’s suspending his campaign
Not because I was a former staffer for a Republican Senator who also served on President Bush’s re-election team and by default a Republican loyalist. That would be too easy of an association. The intrigue went deeper than that.
Here we had a handsome, articulate, successful business owner who just happened to be African-American and a Republican.
WATCH NBC NEWS COVERAGE OF CAIN ‘SUSPENDING’ HIS CAMPAIGN:
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Okay, I thought. This is different. Let’s take this out for a test drive and see what kind of muscle this new showroom beauty has, I said to myself.
Well we all know that the test ride we all experienced was a bumpy one, to say the least; with many wishing that Cain would have ended his campaign sooner than today — in order to end the prolonged embarrassment, which is exactly what Cain’s campaign has ended up to be.
Click here to view a Grio slideshow of alternative careers for Herman Cain
Cain’s run was a national embarrassment for all concerned: the young staff that hitched their fortunes to a losing candidate with no sense of professionalism or direction; the donors who invested in his candidacy, hoping for some type of modest return (maybe a bumper sticker, lapel pin, or a candidate that was on message); and the volunteers and voters who believed in the vision that Cain tried to articulate.
Cain often came up short, with rambling statements that often contradicted the material that his staff handed out. I’ve lost count of the many times his spokesperson had to backtrack on the candidate’s statements because he found that Cain would say things that were contradictory.
There’s one other group of people who understandably feel let down by Cain’s missteps: African-American Republicans. For all of the strides that were made by Colin Powell, JC Watts, and Condoleezza Rice over the last decade, Cain’s candidacy has erased some of the glow.
Despite the policy differences that many African-Americans have with them, figures like Powell, Watts and Rice came to the policy debate with their facts and intellect in check. In other words: you knew that they knew that serving in public life was an honorable profession and they respected the American people too much to waste their time by not coming to a discussion prepared.
I can’t say that about Herman Cain. When he came to the policy debate his facts were often wrong. He had a hard time grasping some of the most basic foreign policy points. He made a mockery of the dignity of running for president by suggesting that his Secret Service codename would be “cornbread” and that he if he was elected president he would not hire a Muslim for his administration.
I can only imagine that when they heard Cain speak, Dr. Rice, Secretary Powell and Congressman Watts looked on in shocked horror. Regardless of whether or not you’re an African-American Republican, can you blame them?
The jarring responses to the allegations of martial infidelity and sexual harassment, the reports from his office that campaign staffers were not allowed to talk to him unless spoken to first, the puzzling responses to basic policy questions and the outright flip flopping on others left veteran political watchers, members of the media, and the all-important general public left scratching their hands, wondering how and why watching this spectacle could possibly be a good use of their time.
After watching Cain on the campaign trail for about five weeks, I thought I had him figured out. Here is a smart businessman who most likely has a lot of money who wants to play in the presidential field and kick around some ideas. There’s nothing wrong with that; we saw the same in Ross Perot in 1992 and Donald Trump in 2000 and even with Michael Bloomberg floating the idea of a run in the past year. I thought Cain, like the others, was a vanity candidate running for office because he accomplished everything else in life and he wanted a capstone for his career. This has now been proven to be untrue.
The unfortunate truth is that Cain appears to have simply wanted to sell books. He thought running for president would be the best way to make some money selling as many books as he possibly could. His intention was never to be a serious candidate and he probably never thought he would catapult to frontrunner status. In other words, all of this got way out of control and he could not control it. Or could he?
The simple answer is that of course he could have controlled this. He could have controlled this by telling the complete truth, admitting that he had not done his homework when prepping to run for president, and he could have ended this by being forthright about his intentions.
Black Republicans need not worry: there will be another serious candidate from their ranks sometime soon who will run for president, and when she or he emerges, all of America will be watching. When that happens, let’s hope we can give that candidate serious consideration and that in return, they will not waste our time and insult our intelligence.
Until then, let’s all forget the man who said he was running for president, but really wanted to sell us some pizza.
