Every four years I put myself through the torture of following the candidates for President and if you look at the left column of this page you can see as many of the serious candidates as I can find.
Today Herman Cain announced he is “suspending” his run for the Republican nomination. It’s a technical thing and I can’t imagine he will gain the nomination. Suspending instead of ending his candidacy allows him to continue to raise money (though I can’t imagine anyone contributing) and spend money. I suspect he’s doing this so he can close his books and pay his campaign staffers. More about him later.
I also looked at the links I have for other candidates. For several I’ve updated the links when they’ve changed the URL. Others have broken links and I can’t find a campaign page and I’ve deleted them. Here is that list:
Democrat
Jeff Boss
Republican
Herman Cain
Bob Forthen
Roger Nichols
John Revelis
Green
Winona LaDuke (this was actually a mistake: there is a web page to draft her but no page where she says she wants to be President. There are several names being mentioned for the Green nomination but I haven’t found anyone who has announced).
Libertarian
Jim Duesing
Independent
Jim Duesing
James Cooper
Temperance Alesha Lance-Council (this was also a mistake. Her web page is about her candidacy in 2008)
If you are running for President and have a web page, please email me.
Now onto Herman Cain. My last post spoke of his 9-9-9 tax plan, but it’s been clear for the last several weeks that his campaign was doomed.
Charges of sexual harassment are nothing new in political campaigns and they are always bothersome: they turn on he said/she said. What troubled me about this was that the story was first broken by Politico.com in October and they gave the Cain campaign 10 days notice that they were going to publish the story. You can read the original posting here. With 10 days notice the campaign didn’t have a coherent response; at first they attacked Politico.com without denying the charges. Then they couldn’t explain why the National Restaurant Association settled with women who claimed he harassed them. As the weeks went on it just got worse; his poll numbers fell through the floor and it became clear that he was not electable. I give him credit for figuring this out.
The charges notwithstanding, he should have done a better job responding to this. Our President has to respond quickly and coherently to all sorts of things: world leaders who make stupid and provocative allegations, countries or groups that threaten violence, or just plain bad news. The fact that Herman Cain and his campaign fumbled so badly on this told us that he was nowhere near ready to lead the country. He may have had good management skills, but our President needs the type of skills he showed us he doesn’t have.