Photograph by Ben Baker / Redux for Newsweek
It’s funny that Herman Cain’s endorsement of Newt Gingrich comes too late (once again showing Cain’s lack of political skills) and just a week after Cain unknowingly became the butt of the joke in another of Stephen Colbert’s pranks.
Before he committed to the satirical South Carolina campaign event with Colbert, did Cain fully comprehend that the comedian’s phony candidacy and phony super PAC are just as a gag? If you can’t vote for Colbert, the TV host said, vote for Cain.
Apparently, Cain didn’t get the joke – and as a result he became the joke. At the Colbert-Cain rally, you sometimes got the sense that Cain, engulfed in arrogance and desperately needing to regain the spotlight, had no idea what was happening.
If he thought that he and Colbert were jointly making a point that the Republican field is weak, Colbert cleared up any confusion a few days later.
The Comedy Central satirist cracked a joke that Cain may no longer have the support of the Tea Party, but he has formed the Stay On TV Party.
In retrospect, Cain obviously never expected to be elected president. In fact, the former pizza magnate apparently never expected to play a role any bigger than Alan Keyes did in prior GOP campaigns – the outsider who was allowed to get in a few jabs.
In a recent interview with The Daily Beast, Cain conceded that his unexpected rise in the polls was so “surreal” that it gave him an “Alice-in-Wonderland feeling.”
Eventually, mistruths and flip-flops and a dangerously ignorant and flippant approach to foreign policy damaged his candidacy. And, of course, there was the sex scandal.
Though Cain as a CEO authorized two settlements in response to sexual harassment allegations against him (to avoid lawsuits), he claimed that the allegations made were “a lie.” From there, his story changed, bit by bit. In addition, his explanation about a 13-year non-affair with another woman never added up.
Those voters who stood with him may be interested in hearing his latest comments on the subject:
“I think that focusing so much on someone’s personal, sexual, or marital affairs is a distraction,” he said in The Daily Beast interview. “It’s a matter of degree; if it’s above a certain point, yes. If you have someone who has lived a polygamous life, that would raise questions about their character and ability to obey the law. But the fact that somebody had been divorced and remarried—so what? Infidelity? If people want to put that into their evaluation, they have the right to do so. But the first thing I want to assess is your ability to lead and solve problems.”
Is he saying what I think he’s saying? If so, no wonder he endorsed Gingrich.
If some still doubt that Cain ran for president on a lark, hoping to sell his book and boost his popularity (and speaking fees), consider how so many political pros have reacted to Cain’s post-withdrawal behavior.
Others describe their past campaign failures as painful, devastating events in their lives. But Cain is “grinning his way from one (speaking) engagement to the next with the gleeful relish of a fox surveying a packed henhouse,” according to Leslie Bennetts of The Daily Beast.
When Cain dropped out of the race in December, he said he would make an endorsement before the South Carolina primary; he said his mission would be to make his 9-9-9 tax plan the law of the land; and he said he would launch a new website to promote his favorite political causes.
Well, the Cain endorsement became nearly worthless after the former candidate used it to play games and unsuccessfully string out voter anticipation. First he waffled, then he promised an “unconventional” endorsement, then two weeks ago he revealed that he was endorsing not a candidate but “the people.”
Looking back, Cain the showman somehow thought his maudlin people-endorsement was a brilliant idea: “I’m going to be making an unconventional endorsement. I want it to be part of a bigger message. Most people in the media will not like it, but the American people will love it, and it will have a bigger impact on the direction of the Republican Party.”
Meanwhile, his 9-9-9 plan, which was panned by most economists, has already faded into the category of political trivia. None of the candidates, and not even the conservative commentators, mention it any more.
As for the “Cain Solutions” website, it finally went up but it’s short on substance and loaded with dozens of Cain photos – an online shrine to himself.
I would assume that many Republicans who supported the clownish Donald Trump for president last summer at some point have said to themselves: What was I thinking?
And I would hope that many former Cain supporters in the GOP would finally be asking themselves that same question.
