Herman Cain “suspended his campaign,” effectively dropping out of the presidential race today. Why did a pizza executive with a talk show and no political experience rise to the front of the GOP pack in the first place? What will happen now that he’s gone?
As Newt Gingrich might over-generalize, since the beginning of the written word, characters defined by their personality traits often wind up being tragically destroyed by them. So it is with Herman Cain, a man whose drive, ego, outsider draw and out-sized back-slapping nature briefly made him the Republican front-runner before wrecking his reputation, credibility, and entire campaign.
With the Iowa caucuses exactly one month away, it’s worth talking through how Cain rose so high and fell so far in order to understand what will happen now that he’s out of the race.
How it happened:
Cain “won” the very first Republican debate (which did not feature Romney, Perry, or Huntsman) and showed himself to be a great showman in front of both cameras and crowds. He clearly relished the opportunity to be in the spotlight. But he also repeatedly frustrated political observers with his insistence on campaigning in states like Tennessee and Wisconsin while his poll numbers skyrocketed in Iowa, a crucial state he barely even set foot in until recently. On the substantive side, there were policies like his “9-9-9″ flat-tax plan, which almost everyone except the people that allegedly wrote it agreed made absolutely no sense. Even when sexual harassment allegations against him first came to light, the New York Times Magazine commented on just how much Cain was able to defy gravity, sitting and conducting a Fox News interview for half an hour with his back to the audience that had already waited so long to see him.
But you don’t get to the top of the polls through haplessness and bombast (just ask Michele Bachmann). In a political environment where Congress’s approval is in the single digits and the President’s is seriously sinking into Jimmy Carter territory, Cain represented exactly what the people thought they wanted: a “solutions-based” outsider with a winning public image. The fact that he had no organization to speak of and a healthy regard for himself but little else only dragged him down when it finally punctured the core of that competent problem-solver narrative.
In many ways, it was the image of Cain not remembering what, if anything, had gone on in Libya rather than the five sexual harassment allegations (at that time) that sent him into a tailspin. Sitting away from the bright lights of the debates (which he performed well in by pivoting to style from substance) and the rallies (which he could electrify, having training and experience as a paid speaker and radio host), Herman Cain seemed to crumple in on himself. He looked tired. He was clearly clueless. And rather than try to run headlong into the brain-freeze, like Rick Perry did, Cain canceled another sit-down with one of the most influential newspapers in New Hampshire. Just as with the sexual harassment allegations, his response only compounded the initial crisis.
So by the time the accusation of a thirteen-year affair rolled around and Cain’s lawyer issued a non-denial statement as the candidate himself said something different on CNN, the game was up. Cain’s ego and unwillingness to believe he was subject to the same rules of conduct as everybody else cemented itself in the minds of his potential voters. Would we really want a man who doesn’t have the knowledge he needs and can’t manage people who might have that knowledge to be managing the country, they asked? No matter how good of a game he talked?
Both sides of the aisle have been studying a pair of recent presidential races this time around: 2004 and 1992. In both cases, dissatisfaction with the government ran high (though over different issues) and there was a broad sense of discontent against both parties. Herman Cain tapped into what you might call the “Ross Perot vote,” that fierce desire to stick a finger in the eye of “establishment politicians” by electing a well-funded populist with no prior political experience. But Perot and Cain both imploded, in shockingly similar fashions: their erratic self-centered behavior and inability (or unwillingness) to manage it finally dragged them down to earth.
At the end of the day, no matter how much of an outsider’s mantle you claim in politics, you need to have the competence (or hire someone with the competence, as George W. Bush did) to manage the grueling day-to-day aspects of political life. Herman Cain didn’t, and, like so many before him, he’s going to sit on the sidelines and believe himself to be right as the people who were willing to do the punishing behind-the-scenes image-control campaigning pass him by.
What happens next:
As the Los Angeles Times cheekily pointed out, Cain supporters thinking of departing for Gingrich will have to choose whether to shift their support from an accused serial adulterer to an admitted serial adulterer. Still, since Cain’s loss of votes was more about his core competence than the sexual harassment claims, and Gingrich also loves to project an image of competence (albeit a wonky politically-based competence), he’ll likely see some bounce in his support. There’s also a sense amongst the rank-and-file that since he’s now clearly the front-runner and is not named Mitt Romney, they might as well get on board. However, Gingrich’s ego is also rather massive, and as Politico notes, “bad Newt” is a real character that derailed his campaign early on, with the capability to do so again.
Surprisingly, Jon Huntsman has been getting a “second look” from traditional conservative cognoscenti, like Redstate’s Erick Erickson and the old stalwart George Will. He was the governor of a ruby-red state (Utah), after all, and has a rather conservative record when you actually, y’know, look at it and ignore his incompetence at getting his message out. Plus, as the President’s team has made no secret of saying, they would much prefer to run against someone polarizing and gaffe-prone like Gingrich than Romney or Huntsman. Voters not so eager to jump into bed with Gingrich and his bombast who would also like to win the general election will probably give Huntsman some serious attention, particularly in Florida.
Sarah Palin predicted that the social conservative Rick Santorum might see a bit of a bounce in Iowa as a result of Cain’s absence, since he is effectively the only real “moralist” candidate running and moralist voters are a sizable bloc there. But unlike in 2008, there’s much more of an electability drive permeating Iowa, to the point where even die-hard social conservatives are considering endorsing thrice-married, twice-spectacularly-divorced Gingrich. Also, Sarah Palin is the type of person for whom the phrase “consider the source” was invented.
Ultimately, the biggest beneficiary will be Gingrich in the short term, with Huntsman seeing flickers of pickups in New Hampshire and Florida that he’ll have to capitalize on if Romney finishes abysmally in Iowa. Santorum might see his vote count increase from 4,000 to 4,099.
And as for Cain himself? Well, he’ll endorse someone. Then, I’d imagine, like South Carolina’s “hiking governor” Mark Sanford, who had a long affair with an Argentinian woman that forced him from office, Herman Cain will find a very warm reception on Fox News as a commentator in 2012. He’ll flash that million-dollar grin that made him so appealing to so many voters and insist, in his brief chances to bask under the studio lights again, that he was always, always, always right.
Photo credit: Gage Skidmore.
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Chas Carey
Chas Carey was born between Jesse Jackson’s presidential campaigns and raised in a loving New England Republican household that took a brief California detour. He’s written about politics off and on since 2006. His other work has shown up in places like NANO Fiction, ...
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