As good as any of the others

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The GOP's political lobotomy

By Richard Cohen

Tuesday, January 25, 2011

Herman Cain is thinking of running for president. I learned this from an article by Dan Balz, The Post's chief political correspondent, so I know it's true. Cain is a Republican. He is the former chairman of Godfather's Pizza and calls himself "The Hermanator." If elected, he would be America's second African American president, the second in a row, actually, and the first of any race to be named Herman. You can, as I have done, look it up.

I now know slightly more about Cain than I do of John Thune, Mike Pence and Jon Huntsman. They are also mentioned as possible GOP presidential candidates. They join a field of better-knowns, which includes the inevitable Sarah Palin, the persistent Newt Gingrich, the ideologically flexible Mitt Romney, the religiously besotted Tim Pawlenty, the improbable Haley Barbour, the familiar Mike Huckabee, the diligently competent Mitch Daniels and the ferociously conservative Rick Santorum, who could not even hold on to his Senate seat. As this list makes clear, the Democrats will occupy the White House forever.

Not on this list are Rick Perry, the governor of the once-solvent state of Texas, and Jeb Bush, the former governor of Florida and the brother of one president and the son of another. They both say they are not running, which is half a pity (Bush has some interesting ideas on education) and would mean that no one in the GOP field comes from a mega-state - New York, California, Florida or Texas. For the GOP, this is a disaster. Since 1968, every Republican president with the exception of the accidental Gerald Ford has come from California or Texas.

More important, there's not a name on the list that screams president!  

[snipped]

I upbraid myself for not knowing of "The Hermanator" and his possible presidential candidacy. But when I look over the GOP field, I see the wisdom in his candidacy. He must think, and not entirely without reason, that he's as good as any of the others. The pity is, he is.

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