They Don’t Pay Extra for Tears

Posted on | December 5, 2011 | 66 Comments

My 12-year-old son Jefferson with Herman Cain, July 17, 2011.

Journalism is a cynical racket and if you can’t dismiss tragedy and suffering with a sarcastic joke, you don’t belong in a newsroom.

Famine and wars, airplane crashes, disease, murder — horrible stuff happens to people every day, and your job is to turn it into that commodity called “news.” You’re not paid to give a damn about the human beings whose lives are blighted or destroyed by these disasters.

And most of the time, you don’t give a damn. Because you can’t, really.

You’d go nuts if you ever stopped to think — much less care — about the unspeakable misery involved in so much of what we call “news.”

Over the past several days, I’ve made a lot of phone calls and talked to a lot of people who joined me aboard that wild ride called the “Cain Train.” My thought was to write the definitive post-mortem on the campaign, to analyze this disaster based on all I’ve seen and heard over the past year. But I didn’t write that article, and there’s a reason why.

You see, it’s become a family tradition that, every year, Daddy takes his sons out to buy The Best Christmas Tree Ever. For all my personal and professional failures — “Not Good Enough for BlogCon” — I have an unbroken streak of success at doing this one thing. Every year, Daddy goes to get the tree and every year when I bring it home, the entire family agrees that this is The Best Christmas Tree Ever.

So about 7 p.m., instead of transcribing audio and doing that definitive analytical post-mortem on the Cain campaign I’d meant to write, my boys and I went off to find The Best Christmas Tree Ever. Of course, we succeeded, but while we were on our quest (with my 19-year-old son Bob at the wheel), I did manage to do a couple of interviews with my cell phone and handy digital recorder.

By the time we got back home, it was 9 o’clock — my wife said, “Wow! It really is The Best Christmas Tree Ever!” — and my American Spectator deadline was just three hours away. So I had to work fast and, after I started writing, the story took a detour that surprised even me:

Mike Rogers was on board what became known as the Cain Train even before the locomotive left the station. A computer systems engineer who lives in New Hampshire, Rogers first heard Herman Cain speak at an Americans for Prosperity conference in 2009, and immediately believed the Georgia businessman should be the next President of the United States. Rogers and his wife gave the maximum legal contribution to Cain’s presidential exploratory committee before the former Godfather’s Pizza CEO officially announced his Republican primary candidacy in May.
“I was sitting in the front row for the announcement in Atlanta,” Rogers said Sunday, a day after Cain returned home to Atlanta to announce that he would suspend his campaign, which had soared to the top of the GOP field in early October but was eventually derailed by accusations of sexual misconduct that the 65-year-old candidate has insisted are false and politically motivated. In announcing his exit from the campaign trail, Cain said he was moving from “Plan A” — winning the White House in 2012 — to “Plan B,” an issues-advocacy website, but Saturday was definitely the end of the dream that Rogers and thousands of other self-declared “Cainiacs” had dreamed for months.
“Plan B is just face-saving,” Rogers said. “Unless he’s able to clear his name and get back in, or clear his name and be picked as the [vice-presidential running mate] for somebody, essentially his best bet is to take his raised profile and get back on the radio, maybe a little bit of TV, and push his policies. But really, it’s not going to have the same force as being in the field shaping the debate.”
Unlike the TV talking heads, print pundits and late-night comedians who spent the past five weeks reporting, analyzing or mocking each new accusation against Cain, it’s not easy for true believers like Rogers to move on. The media immediately turned their attention to speculating about which of the remaining Republican candidates will benefit most from Cain’s painful encounter with the politics of personal destruction, while the dreamers awoke to life without a dream. . . . .

You really should read the whole thing. Some words you write with tears in your eyes, but they don’t pay extra for that. So I suppose I’ll be content with knowing I got The Best Christmas Tree Ever — again!

Category: Christmas, Election 2012, Herman Cain, Mrs. Other McCain

Comments

66 Responses to “They Don’t Pay Extra for Tears”

Mike Rogers
December 5th, 2011 @ 7:43 am

Hmm – my name in lights far beyond the “other McCain” Family Christmas tree!
Aside from the minor fact that it took a year of chance and intentional encounters to move from “highly impressed” to “Herman must be President”, this is bang on.
Now we look at the poor choices and wonder how we’ll ever roll beck the leviathan:
The man who has run for 5 years without exceeding 25% likeability.
The professor so mercurial that he is described as a “volcano of ideas”.
The states’ rights governor who embraced crony capitalism.
The strict constitutionalist who (a) blames America for terrorism, and (b) isn’t so clean himself: http://spectator.org/archives/2011/09/13/the-hypocrisy-of-ron-paul
The two moralizers fighting over Iowa, of which Santorum has at least a chance for an upset.
The other smarmy Mormon governor (it’s not the religion, it’s the smarm).
The truly unknown but very interesting conservative from LA – Buddy Roemer.
The vanishingly low-profile governor from the Southwest who just took his toys home and threatened a run as Libertarian instead.
As someone said in response to the Huck forum – can’t we draft one of those three AG’s instead?
Could the convention be so F—ed up that Palin could be nominated by acclaim?
Bob Belvedere
December 5th, 2011 @ 8:04 am

You fought the valiant fight for a good cause.

Bloody but unbowed.

WOLVERINES.
steve benton
December 5th, 2011 @ 8:08 am

Herman will endorse Newt Gingrich today. I have settled for Newt, as I believe he is the only person capable to unravel the madness wrought by Obama.
steve benton
December 5th, 2011 @ 8:09 am

BTW, what’s up with the fat chicks on the weight loss ad? Thankfully, I wasn’t eating.
Hugh Vaughan-Williams
December 5th, 2011 @ 8:10 am

Excellent piece, proving once again, that true newsmen do their best work under a tight deadline.
ThePaganTemple
December 5th, 2011 @ 8:13 am

Well a good part of the reason she didn’t run was because of what you just did here to all the other candidates. Not that your concerns aren’t valid, but while she was mulling it over whether to run or not, there was an abundance of people in our own party, and not all of them typically RINOs , agonizing over her perceived flaws and weaknesses, proclaiming she couldn’t possibly hope to win the moderates and independents, trumping the MSM line that she was behind Obama by double digits in the polls, insisting that she didn’t have the breath of experience necessary, and even that she was a “quitter”.

Out of the candidates we have left, you can go over them with a fine toothed comb and find plenty of flaws and weaknesses, but you can find an abundance of higher qualities and strengths as well. In other words, unless some divine being pops in from on high somewhere, I guess we’re stuck with human beings to run against the Democrat Demigod. It’s up to all of us to pick out the best of the pack, the Heracles who, though fatally flawed , is most adept at strangling the seemingly invincible Nemean Lion and cutting him apart with his own claws.

I prefer Bachmann-you know, one of the “moralizers”, or failing that, Gingrich. But as they say YMMV.
Zilla of the Resistance
December 5th, 2011 @ 8:17 am

Congratulations on getting the best Christmas tree EVAH, Stacy. How is our young future President, Jefferson McCain, doing in the wake of the character assassination of Herman Cain which also killed the Cain campaign?
smitty
December 5th, 2011 @ 8:44 am

@BobBelvedere The sad truth is that, in this day and age, no one runs a serious campaign without TweetDeck.
Anonymous
December 5th, 2011 @ 9:11 am

(shouted to the other candidates as they leave the stockade)
“BOYS! AVENGE ME! AVEEENNNGGE ME!!”
chuck coffer
December 5th, 2011 @ 9:20 am

Does taking a giant shit all over the rest of the republican field make Herman Cain a better man?
Pathfinder
December 5th, 2011 @ 9:20 am

Getting the Best Christmas Tree Ever was the most important thing. A fine looking young man you have for a son.

I’m thinking along the same lines as Mike Rogers — what now?
The only bright point seems to be that a lot of Dem voters are fairly disenchanted with Obama, so at least some people are beginning to realize their “messiah” wasn’t so wonderful after all (at least maybe they’ll start to think a bit for themselves I hope).
chuck coffer
December 5th, 2011 @ 9:21 am

Beautiful writing is a joy for the reader… even the subject is such a sad one.
Robert Birch
December 5th, 2011 @ 9:22 am

I’ll trust Ron Paul with undoing Obama’s damage to the country than Newt Gingrich. Mitt Romney ACTUALLY, looks respectable compared to Newt.
ThePaganTemple
December 5th, 2011 @ 9:22 am

I just saw a poll which has Gingrich on top with over 500 votes. Michelle was second with 156 votes. Everybody else was in double digits, with Santorum I think at something like 46 votes. And this was a Tea Party poll. Since the Tea Party is probably more or less an accurate reflection of Iowa caucus goers in general, I think that pretty much tells the story. It’s going to be Gingrich, or if he manages to implode sometime over the next month, Bachmann. So there’s the name of that there tune.
Finrod Felagund
December 5th, 2011 @ 9:31 am

I can’t get behind any of the remaining candidates now, and maybe not for a while. Like many others I was hoping Sarah would run, when she didn’t Herman Cain was the best of the field, and now without him as an option, well, the trio of Gingrich, Perry and Romney isn’t as sad a choice as the choice I had by the time the primaries got to me last time (McCain, Huckabee, and Romney), but still it’s pretty grim.

Santorum? Santorum did basically the same thing to Toomey that Gingrich did to Hoffman, so why is he any better? That, and Santorum tried to eviscerate the National Weather Service, which behind the US military and the interstate highway system are the top three things the US federal government has done to help the lives of its citizens (just ask anyone whose life has been saved by a tornado warning, a concept that didn’t exist before 1950). So I don’t consider Santorum an option, despite his recent burst of enthusiasm here.
Christy Waters
December 5th, 2011 @ 9:52 am

I just want to say how much I love that picture!
Anonymous
December 5th, 2011 @ 9:53 am

Thanks for the feedback, Mike — and my apologies if my deadline rush caused me to slightly confuse the story of your “courtship” with Herman. You might say I had “all these thoughts twirling around in my head.” Happens to the best of us.
Leslie Eastman
December 5th, 2011 @ 9:55 am

“Democrat Demigod”: This reminded me of my least favorite scene in an otherwise excellent movie I saw with my son (Percy Jackson/Lightening Thief). Basically, one of the actors ad libbed a line that indicated Obama was the child of Greek gods. Yeah, sure.
Anamika
December 5th, 2011 @ 10:01 am

I dislike Christmas and if it was entirely up to me, I would bah humbug
the whole gaudy and commercial affair as it’s become more of an
unwelcome chore than a pleasure, something to get out of the way. We
don’t put a tree up although I like to buy those potted norfolk pines
and I have an indoor palm that has white lights on it all year so maybe
that counts, too.
richard mcenroe
December 5th, 2011 @ 10:01 am

That will lower my opinion of both men. (With Newt I didn’t think you could do that) A man who says he was wrongly accused of philandering turning around and endorsing a known, proven philanderer? WTF?

If Cain’s endorsement is worth anything, then he should never have been driven out of the campaign. If it isn’t, Newt is an idiot to accept it.

Unless, as others have speculated, both are just gaming the campaign.
Herman Cain
December 5th, 2011 @ 10:03 am

Did I give you an exclusive on who I am going to endorse today? No? Oh sorry about that…but Politico has the inside dope.

Do you think that may be part of my problem?
Joe
December 5th, 2011 @ 10:05 am

It is also hard to run a campaign when you don’t have a contingency plan for sexual harassment charges you know exist. Do you think I could have had my team ready for this? Of course when JD Gordon is more fit for driving a clown car than the Cain Train, what can one expect?
ThePaganTemple
December 5th, 2011 @ 10:08 am

And thankfully, I just noticed they had the good sense to leave Ron Paul off the poll, which has his pod people whining like a bunch of spoiled brats. And Huntsman by the way has all of twelve votes lol
ThePaganTemple
December 5th, 2011 @ 10:12 am

You’re a liberal, so of course you’d feel that way. The only thing wrong with Christmas is there’s nothing worth a shit on television. And that’s liberals fault. I think its part of their secret war on Christmas, by doing their part to make it as boring and depressing as possible.
ThePaganTemple
December 5th, 2011 @ 10:16 am

The really bad thing about it is, when Obama first ran Democrats treated him like a Demigod, now a lot of them are mad at him but now its Republicans are treating him that way, in an off-hand kind of way. Just look at the crap you see on all these blogs, not just this one but others. Every single candidate has to be pitch perfect in every way. All Democrats have to do is point out some flaw, however relatively minor it might be, and they have us playing Whack-A-Mole with our own candidates. It’s turning into a not so secret inside Democrat joke. The best one yet-Michelle Bachmann has “headaches”. If you like self-effacing gallows humor, the conservative blogosphere is the place to be.
Joe
December 5th, 2011 @ 10:24 am

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1111/68706.html

You need to go all Romney, all the time.
steve benton
December 5th, 2011 @ 10:31 am

I can’t do Ron Paul. If you can’t get the Israel question right, there’s no sense in going any further.
Mike Rogers
December 5th, 2011 @ 10:34 am

Ha! An impostor, but a very clever thought nonetheless.
Mike Rogers
December 5th, 2011 @ 10:38 am

I’m thinking Newt on purely pragmatic grounds that he’ll take the fight to the enemy and that he understands the gravity of the situation well enough to put his statist tendencies aside.
Mr OtherMcCain is thinking Santorum, and I can’t totally disagree with him – Santorum has at least shown the acumen of picking really good campaign staff.
Mike Rogers
December 5th, 2011 @ 10:43 am

But of course, John Edwards never tainted the rest of the Democrat field. Liberals have double standards, which makes you……..

Cain is a fine man with one mistake of misplaced trust, and a bunch of false accusations – the media are the ones who are happy to smear the entire GOP field one by one until we get a candidate either indistinguishable from Obama, or easy to beat, or both.
Pathfinder
December 5th, 2011 @ 10:47 am

The big reservation I have with Newt is that those loose cannon ideas will start rolling around in his head…and then one of them will detonate.

I rather like Santorum, but his campaign needs to start picking up then. He’s got a problem with typecasting — even Republicans seem to dismiss him as a cranky whinger. If somebody could fix that image, then he might really break out.
Pathfinder
December 5th, 2011 @ 10:48 am

Well you have fun with that then.
Robert Birch
December 5th, 2011 @ 10:53 am

Constitutionally speaking…if Ron Paul was president he shouldn’t be able to declare war…only Congress can declare war. AND Congress hasn’t declared war since 1941.
Mike Rogers
December 5th, 2011 @ 11:18 am

Palin’s been vetted, and while she has a few detractors, I believe the’s the increasingly well-rounded (intellectually, of course) real deal.

Please take my thumbnail sketches of the candidates with the grain of salt which was intended, although all are based on actual observation, sometimes up close.
Mikey NTH
December 5th, 2011 @ 11:18 am

You will less likely be disappointed if you remember that we are looking to nominate a presidential candidate, not a saviour.
Finrod Felagund
December 5th, 2011 @ 11:22 am

I try to always watch A Charlie Brown Christmas every year. Where else are you going to see the Bible read from during prime time?
Anonymous
December 5th, 2011 @ 11:25 am

“a few detractors”

… presumably including the 59% of poll respondents who told Quinnipac there were no circumstances under which they’d vote for her back in May.

High negatives can be brought down, but the candidate slot in a presidential campaign isn’t the best place to bring them down from; that’s where you go AFTER you bring them down.
Bob Belvedere
December 5th, 2011 @ 11:27 am

Bravo!
Joe
December 5th, 2011 @ 11:29 am

http://www.mediaite.com/tv/kirsten-powers-only-question-is-if-gingrich-implodes-before-or-after-getting-gop-nomination/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+mediaite%2FClHj+%28Mediaite%29

I don’t normally cite Kristen Powers as an authority, but she has a point with this.
Bob Belvedere
December 5th, 2011 @ 11:32 am

Okay…how much are they paying you?
Joe
December 5th, 2011 @ 11:33 am

Palin is unfortunately in a bad situation. The only way out for her is several years of making herself relevant. I agree with Knappster, she has to bring them down before running.
Bob Belvedere
December 5th, 2011 @ 11:36 am

Don’t be dissing Rudolph and A Christmas Story.
Anonymous
December 5th, 2011 @ 11:41 am

The good news for Palin:

– This is Romney’s last run. He doesn’t want to be Harold Stassen.

– This is Newt’s only run, unless he becomes VP and seeks promotion later, which is unlikely.

– This is Paul’s last run, unless his brain is transplanted into some kind of cyborg rig.

– Obama looks very likely to be re-elected.

– While there are some reasonably popular Republicans out there, most of them don’t have her name recognition. If she could bring her positives up outside her niche over the next 2-3 years, she’d be an instant front-runner for the 2016 GOP nomination.
Joe
December 5th, 2011 @ 11:48 am

I am willing to consider the accusations to be false (out of courtesy to Cain) but I also conceed he completely utterly failed on coming up with a damage control plan that he had to know would be an issue (certainly in the case of the harassment settlements). While I agree with Jeff Goldstein we need to fight back when the left tries to kill our candidates, Herman has a duty to save himself. That is why Herman is suspended now. It goes to Herman and the campaign.
ThePaganTemple
December 5th, 2011 @ 11:49 am

Was you meaning “A Christmas Carol”? And if so, which one?
Joe
December 5th, 2011 @ 11:49 am

Herman also dissed Stacy McCain and that is unacceptable. Sorry Herman, you lost me with doing that. I do not trust a candidate who treats his friends poorly.
Joe
December 5th, 2011 @ 11:50 am

You are a good egg RSM and it is too bad Herman has not yet called you to apologize. Because he should.
Mike Rogers
December 5th, 2011 @ 11:59 am

Disssing Stacy was unfogivable, but the campaign had lost focus internally – not sure who was responsible for that. In my experience, Herman is good to friendly bloggers.
Mike Rogers
December 5th, 2011 @ 12:00 pm

99.6% accuracy – you’ll be on 600+ radio stations next 😉
Donald Trump
December 5th, 2011 @ 12:17 pm

Ann Althouse made this rather silly statement about me:

December 5, 2011
“Donald Trump Mulls Third-Party Bid as He Enjoys GOP Kingmaker Role.” According to the Wall Street Journal.

If that’s his attitude, he should not be moderating a debate!

All of the women on The Apprentice flirted with me – consciously or unconsciously. That’s to be expected. Do you think it is any different for Ann Althouse? How can she resist me?