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.
Rick Perry hasn't spent his entire adult life in one political office or another, unless adulthood begins when you're 34 years old.
One of the best packaged marketing schemes is this notion that Herman Cain is a non-politician, an "outsider". Herman deserves a great deal of credit for selling that malarkey.
Herman Cain has been involved in national politics at least since 1996. He has run for national office in 2000, 2004, and now once again. Perry, who started at it in 1984, has more years of it under his belt, but ole Herman is doing his best to catch up! As a matter of fact, if Herman keeps at it for a while longer, we may be able to refer to him as a career candidate, the Ralph Nader of the 21st century! :)
OK, you got me on that one. The first 13 adult years of Perry's adult life weren't spent in political office.
But since then, over the last 27 years, he has spent his adult life in one political office after another. Rick Perry hasn't spent his ENTIRE adult life in political office, only 2/3 of his adult life in political office.
Yep, you got me on tht one. Glad we could clear that up.
Really, who would dare say someone that is in their 60s and has held one political office or another continually since they were 34 is a career politican? What was I thinking?
No matter how you wish to define experience, experience is self evident. If you believe that business experience is more important than political experience that is your call. However, to say that experience in a particular profession is a bad thing is just silly.
There you go again. :)
You weren't thinking, you were engaging in hyperbole, you've all but admitted as much. I applaud you for your candor. The more obsessive anti-Perry posters wouldn't rise to your level of honesty.
Me too.
My only real emotional attachment was my 4 year secret love affair with Sarah.
She decided not to run and she rejected my offer of life on a beautiful island, so broken-hearted I moved to the next best conservative {but with no emotional attachment}.
I think that Herman will surprise a lot of the folks.
I saw him last summer at a TEA party and he was great.
You are the one who has hitched Rick Perry to this delusional article which under normal circumstances would require a Barf! tag on Freerepublic.
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.
I understand that someone who has never held political office will have his handicaps, and they are large. Government is completely unlike any business in the world. I think it's common sense that governors are the closest in experience to the Presidency.
That being said, There are certainly drawbacks to spending 27 straight years in elected office. People who have made a career pandering for votes for the next election and spend every waking moment grasping for power are destroying this country. Can you prove Rick Perry isn't like all those others? Did he vote for Jimmy Carter and Walter Mondale over Ronald Reagan? Did he vote for Michael Dukakis in 1988 after Al Gore dropped out? Was the Democrat Party in Texas from 1984 to 1989 more conservative than the Republican Party of Texas in the same time period? Were the ideals, goals and plans of the Democrat Party in the middle of Ronald Reagan's term more conservative than the Republicans? Or was he a Democrat because it was the most likely path to win and keep elected office? Why did he switch parties? Did he have a massive conservative epiphany in 1989? After eight years of watching Ronald Reagan did he finally, one year after campaigning for Al Gore, figure out that republicans were more conservative than Democrats? Or was he switching horses when he saw his state, or more importantly his district, turning Republican? Right after becoming a Republican he ran for state wide office, rather than stay in the minority in the State Legislature. Coincidence? Maybe. But it's a pattern followed by thousands of career politicians.
As I told you before, Governor Perry is my second choice at this time. Romney, Huntsman and Johnson are the only other governors and are completely unqualified because of their positions. Gingrich, Paul and Bachmann have zero executive experience. That makes Perry #2 on the list. But he walks like a career politician and quacks like a career politician. And unlike the author of the article I don't think that's a compliment.
Fractions are fun! Did you know that Herman Cain has spent over 1/2 as many years as Rick Perry engaged in politics and seeking elective office? :)
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.
Rick Perry has said he voted for Ronald Reagan. He said he voted for Carter because he (as many did) felt he would be good for farmers. But then he realized the party he'd been raised in, wasn't his party -- the growing Republican party was -- and he became the first Republican Lt. Gov of Texas since Reconstruction.
The author agrees with you that the values of Corzine and Christie had more to do with whether or not they were successful as Governors.
He didn’t say Corzine failed because he was a successful businessman, he said that being a businessman was not sufficient to make Corzine a success as governor. Neither was it necessary for Christie to have been a businessman.
We know what Governor Perry has done for over 10 years, with his appointments, his directives and all but one of his Executive Orders supported by the voters of Texas.
His appointed judges get re-elected, his heads of agencies and boards are vilified by the anti-God, anti-life side, but win approval from the people and, for the most part, of the Senate.
An example: Every time the Senate turns down his choice for Chair of the State Board of Education - the members are elected by their districts and the Governor appoints the Chair who has already served for two years before being confirmed - the Governor just appoints another conservative member to the Chair.
http://www.texastribune.org/texas-education/public-education/perry-appoints-cargill-head-state-education-board/
This thread is a canard.
Experienced politicians rape us by nature.
The jerk in the picture is obviously used to swallowing things shaped like that!
We know how much you like establishment goons, but to see any irony in a citizen trying to fix the problems that your elitist owners made is a stretch.
You and Mitt are in for a surprise.
Grinchrich would be an even bigger mistake than Perry, if that is possible.
Whatever you posted, it must have been taken down by the host.
It was an editorial cartoon from the Austin American-Statesman. I guess they’re not allowed. My bad.
Actually it’s still there at post #20. Don’t know why you can’t see it.
To each his own.
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