A recent Quinnipiac University poll shows Herman Cain solidly in the lead in the race for the Republican nomination. His surge in the polls has lasted for well over a month and shows few signs of abating, although it remains to be seen how the recent sexual-harassment allegations will affect him.
Cain’s enduring popularity is a cause for concern because, well, he’s a stupid, stupid man.
Despite his heavy reliance on simplistic talking points early in the campaign, I initially didn’t think Cain was any duller than the average politician. He was a successful CEO, after all.
I began to have doubts when I saw him discuss abortion on Stossel. There’s only one way to square the statement “Abortion should not be legal” with the statement “That’s her choice [whether to have an abortion or not], that is not government’s choice”—Cain doesn’t understand what it means to be pro-choice or pro-life and is incapable of articulating a coherent opinion on the issue.
An isolated incident, maybe? Unfortunately not. His knowledge of foreign affairs is abysmal, and there’s no indication he’s interested in addressing that deficiency. In an interview with Chris Wallace on Fox News Sunday a few months back, it was obvious Cain had no idea what the Palestinian “right of return” was, although that didn’t stop him from firmly supporting Israel’s position—about which he apparently knew nothing. But Cain didn’t exactly hit the books after this embarrassing gaffe. Last month on Meet the Press, Cain admitted to host David Gregory that he was unfamiliar with neoconservatism—the philosophy that guided the Bush Administration’s foreign policy for eight years.
Some might be concerned that a man who could be the next president is so ill-informed about such basic political issues. But Cain thinks it’s funny. He recently told one interviewer, “I’m ready for the ‘gotcha’ questions and they are already starting to come. And when they ask me, ‘Who is the president of Ubeki-beki-beki-beki-stan-stan?’ I’m going to say, ‘You know, I don’t know. Do you know?’” Well, Uzbekistan is actually an important theater in the so-called War on Terrorism, so it might be helpful to know that the corruption in Islam Karimov’s regime threatens the northern supply route to the US government’s puppet in Kabul.
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Cain’s utter lack of knowledge about the threats facing America hasn’t stopped him from bloviating against those threats. In an interview on PBS’s NewsHour last week, he told Judy Woodruff that China has “indicated that they’re trying to develop nuclear capability and they want to develop more aircraft carriers like we have. So yes, we have to consider them a military threat.” China detonated its first nuclear weapon in 1964. It currently has at least 200-300 warheads. I wonder if he knows who the president of “Chi-i-i-na-na” is.
Unfortunately, it’s unlikely that the 30% or so of Republicans who say they plan to vote for Cain have much of a handle on these issues, either. (Well, hopefully they’d at least be able to understand the simple question, “Should abortion be legal?”) So it will take more than repeated displays of ignorance and dimwittedness to unseat Cain from his current frontrunner status, especially considering some of the alternatives.
Rick Perry isn’t much brighter, and even the anti-intellectual Republican mainstream is noticing. He’s so bad at speaking in complete sentences that his campaign has considered pulling him out of future debates. The Texas governor does much better, his advisors have realized, when he’s freed from the onerous task of thinking on his feet. Much better to have him read a speech or a teleprompter than “attack” Mitt Romney for being “on the side of…against…the Second Amendment before he was for the Second Amendment…was it was…before he was before these social programs, uh, from the standpoint of he was for standing up for Roe v. Wade before he was against Roe, uh, Roe v. Wade….”
At least Cain and Perry’s supporters haven’t been taken in by Romney. The sad thing is that I was actually cheering Perry on while he was delivering this painful oration because, despite his contorted language, he was right—Romney is the most odious man in the campaign. Transparently amoral, Romney makes the twice-divorced Gingrich look like a paragon of integrity. His pliability on political issues is only slightly more revolting than his condescending tone and slimy smile. If this is the price of a sliver of intelligence, I’ll take Cain or Perry without a second of hesitation.
Such a sorry situation brings to mind a quote from the old French reactionary Joseph de Maistre. “Every nation,” he wrote, “gets the government it deserves.”
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