First Principles

When Bill Clinton was being impeached for perjury, I was beyond annoyed with the whole spectacle.  It’s not that I don’t think perjury should be taken seriously – it should.  And it wasn’t that I was a Bill Clinton fan – far from it.

"OK, OK - you've got me. The dirty joke I may or may not have told in 1997 totally justifies putting $1.3 Trillion a year on our children's and grandchildren's and great-grandchildren's credit cards, while risking total economic collapse like the Europeans are facing."

But the sanctimony and obvious political hackery at the heart of it all made everyone involved seem small, which meant that my country felt smaller.  It was over a relatively small issue that impacted my personal life hardly a whit.  And in the end, it did far more harm to the Republicans prosecuting the case, and helped build the myth that it was the noble, liberal Democrat Bill Clinton standing alone who kept the prosperity of the 90s chugging along, as opposed to truth, which was that it was generally conservative policies from a Republican Congress (along with a little bit of lucky timing on that whole internet expansion thing…)

Now our country is in far worse danger than it was in the late 1990s.  Europe is collapsing economically, and we’re poised to fall into the same hole right after them.  We need serious, sober leadership right now, and THIS is what we’re talking about?

Cain was reportedly accused of “episodes that left the women upset and offended” and “physical gestures that were not overtly sexual but that made women who experienced or witnessed them uncomfortable and that they regarded as improper in a professional relationship.” The article also described “conversations allegedly filled with innuendo or personal questions of a sexually suggestive nature,” and quoted one second-hand source about an allegation of “an unwanted sexual advance” from Cain.

Seriously – the United States of America is neck deep in debt, a tenth of our population is unemployed, our economic growth is flat, Israel and Iran sound like they’re about five seconds from throwing missiles at each other, and we’re all a-frickin’-twitter about unsubstantiated salty language from 15 frickin’ years ago?

Maybe we really are doomed.  If this is the best we can do, if this is the Defining Issue Of The Day, maybe the light really has gone out from the shining city on the hill.

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Let’s just assume, for the moment, that these allegations are totally true, and that they are as bad as they can possibly be.  In the 1990s, let’s go ahead and say that Herman Cain fully told a handful of women that he wanted to have affairs with them, and then told dirty, rude, and ribald jokes.  Let us go a step further and imagine that he kept a “Naked Ladies of America’s Pizza Parlors” calendar prominently displayed in his office.

Let’s further stipulate that his damage control efforts have been weak (a charitable description), which is more immediately bothersome to me.  A President has to be ready to communicate effectively and quickly in an unfolding national crisis.  And even where the game stinks, it still has to be played.

Any vote is still a choice between two or more candidates, none of whom are perfect.  So here are a few things that bother me more than this little scandal.

• Running up $4,000,000,000,000 in debt over less than three years;
• Adding another (at least) $1.3 Trillion (give or take a few billion) to the national debt every single year without an end in sight;
• Not producing or signing an annual budget for three years;
• Knowingly and illegally giving countless military grade weaponry to foreign criminal enterprises, leading to the deaths of thousands, and then lying (consequence free!) about it when you get caught;
• Snubbing staunch and necessary allies like Israel and Britain;
• Nationalizing car companies;
• Nationalizing the student loan industry;
• Nationalizing the heath care industry;
• Actively snubbing women within your organization as a general practice;
• Any policy which considers a 26 year old man or woman a “child”;
• Raising taxes;
• Increasing spending;
• Harassing banks as an ACORN lawyer into handing out home loans to people who couldn’t afford to pay them back, thus helping blow up the housing bubble;
• Sitting in an overtly racist church for 20 years;
• Demonstrating contempt for me and all Americans by lying about what was said regularly in said church and then expecting us to swallow it;
• Traveling overseas and badmouthing America in the capacity of speaking for America;
• Accepting political patronage from an actual, no kidding, bomb-setting terrorist;
• Using the phrase “teabagger” to describe your political opponents when you’re the frickin’ President of the United States (how’s THAT for inappropriate innuendo?);
• Using the phrase “enemies” to describe your political opponents;
• Giving hundreds of millions of other people’s dollars to subsidize companies run by political cronies already known to be failing;
• Going to war without ANY input from Congress;
• Forcing citizens to buy a product just for being alive, via either a state OR federal government;
• Going from a “pro-choice, economically centrist, culturally liberal, business-oriented Republican” to a “thoroughly pro-life, orthodox supply-side, culturally conservative, Fox News Republican” in just 6 short years, and pretending that this is totally consistent;
• Big Government in the name of Jesus;
• Blaming America for 9/11;
• Being a thinly veiled anti-Semitic, black helicopter fearing whackjob who happily accepts money from white supremacist groups;
• Not understanding the threat posed by Iran and other suicidal isolationism;
• Putting children’s lives in danger by trafficking in the thoroughly disproven “vaccines cause autism” meme…

That’s just the low hanging fruit.  But you get the point.

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I do admit to being relieved that all those Bill Clinton supporters who assured us that “it’s just sex” and that the whole scandal was politically motivated silliness are similarly coming to Cain’s defense.  Especially since when they said that about Clinton, he was facing far more odious, specific, and sourced allegations.

Oh wait – they aren’t?

Huh.  It’s almost as if this whole thing, then, is nothing more than hypocritical, dishonest, and unserious political hackery.

Every Democrat who supported Bill but who suddenly discovered a hate of misogyny needs to have Jones/Willey/Broderick/Lewinski thrown in their faces hourly.  And every Republican who cheered Clinton’s impeachment should remind themselves today why that tactic was a dumb and destructive idea in the first place.

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Maybe someday, Jesus Christ will decide to come on down and run for elective office as a Republican.  Until that day, we will never have a perfect candidate in any party for any position.  There will never be a man or woman running for President of the United States who hasn’t made mistakes, done things they regret, or isn’t and won’t always continue to be a sinner.  And quite frankly, even if such a person exists, I’d rather not have such a timid and cowardly soul as my Commander in Chief.

Herman Cain is definitely not a perfect candidate, or even an ideal one.  He has made some dumb mistakes, usually involving speaking before fully thinking.  I like people running for office who have accomplished things in arenas other than politics, but one can’t deny that the political arena is unique, and that experience doing battle (and winning!) there is, in fact, a plus.  His knowledge of certain foreign policy issues (Right of Return, Chinese nukes) is much weaker than it should be at this point.  I can only imagine how exhausting a Presidential campaign must be, but he still has to do his homework.  (Reagan, for example, had been writing and speaking and thinking and studying about the major foreign policy issues of the day for decades before he ran for President.)  And while I like the boldness (and branding!) of 9-9-9, there are structural and Constitutional concerns with the details.

Still, I believe Cain’s economic and philosophical instincts are right, and he has earned his position in life.  He has faced hardship and failure, and he has a record of taking failing organizations and turning them around (is there a better job description for what’s needed in a POTUS today than that?).  He speaks plainly, and connects with wide swaths of American voters.  He is largely upbeat and positive and optimistic, which I desperately want in a leader.

And perhaps most importantly, I think he is the most rightward candidate that is electable at this point.  I believe he can defeat Barack Obama in 2012.

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An interesting side note on this – recent poll numbers (at least as of this writing) seem to indicate that this has helped Cain as much as it’s hurt him.  And what that really points to is the near total collapse in credibility the mainstream press has when it comes to their political reporting.

While I don’t mind seeing Journo-Listers with egg on their faces, such a credibility collapse hurts the country.  It further polarizes us as a people, and teaches us to ignore bad news that we don’t want to hear but need to know.

I continue to maintain that we’d be better off going back to the days when the press was more overtly partisan.  “Partisan” and “Honest and Thorough” aren’t mutually exclusive, and neither are “Putatively Objective” and “Dishonest and/or Sloppy”.  I would rather see a press with all its cards on the table, frankly.

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The “fact” alleged in this “scandal” may or may not be true.  I have my doubts, and after the Clarence Thomas slander, and the timing and sloppiness of the “investigation” involved here, I think I’m entitled.

And Cain may not be The Guy completely irrespective of this – he’s shown a reckless streak which could still tank his campaign.  I know I’m glad we still have a couple of months before making our choice in our caucuses.

But in the grand scheme of things, considering the enormity of this point in history, I’m just not inclined to care much about unproven allegations of “making people uncomfortable” (gasp!) from over a decade ago.  Barack Obama may be the best family man in the country, but the damage he’s doing to my family far outweighs any regard I might have for his – or anyone else’s – personal life.

It’s way beyond time we get serious about a serious decision at a deadly serious time in American history.  And it’s time we recognize that the purveyors of such “stories” simply aren’t serious people.