Michale Merritt offers an odd criticism of Herman Cain:
That’s because Cain has no national security experience. He’s never worked in the field; he’s a businessman, so it’s not so surprising. He’s also never held high office before, so national security hasn’t come onto his radar from that perspective either. Unlike Perry, Romney, Johnson, and Huntsman, Cain has never had to deal with these issues. He doesn’t, as Republicans used to say, have “executive experience.”
Cain’s business background — as CEO of Godfather’s Pizza and president of the National Restaurant Association — doesn’t count as “executive experience”? But never mind that: How does Mitt Romney’s term as governor of Massachusetts qualify him as a national security expert? And who is Michael Merritt, a 25-year-old with liberal arts diploma, to be offering these assessments?
We’ll leave this aside, not because Merritt doesn’t deserve a more thorough punk-smacking, but because we want to link T.C. Lynch at Leather Penguin, who notices something in an article about erstwhile Chris Christie fundraisers:
Understand something, Tea Party Sheeples: these people are better than you. Notice that in that entire article, the name “Herman Cain” never makes an appearance; he doesn’t exist in their world view, and anyone considering his candidacy to be credible are just run of the mill, bien-pensant fools, who don’t understand the Big Picture.
Read the whole thing. You may have noticed that some of our Republican friends seemed to lose interest in the GOP nomination fight just about the time Rick Perry melted down and Herman Cain surged into contender status. These people are already making peace with the idea of Romney carrying the 2012 Republican banner.
Far be it from me to accuse these Republican friends of racism, because I don’t think that’s really the problem. Rather, I think they have internalized the mystique of the Cult of Expertise, the belief that being president of the United States is a job that only experienced professionals can perform. And I think it’s high time that we destroy that myth, demonstrating once and for all that the professional political class is our fundamental problem.
Populism is an appropriate response when the elites have shown themselves incapable of governance. With all caveats about Cain’s political inexperience considered, and no illusions of him as “Hope and Change” rainbows-and-unicorns saviour a la Obama, I believe he is a man fully qualified to fulfill a vital purpose at a crucial time.
Some of our Republican friends are guilty of “fighting the last war,” when Republicans invested their hope in the “experience” argument on behalf of John McCain. But this is a new election, and Americans are eager to hear a new argument on behalf of a new candidate. I’ve got no grudge against Romney, but if the Republican Party nominates the “It’s His Turn” candidate this year, they will have missed a chance to rally the kind of populist wave that might finally bring real reform to Washington.
