Electability and Herman Cain in the GOP Candidate Field

The latest Washington Post- ABC News poll is out, published online in the Post today by Dan Balz and Jon Cohen.

The poll results show slipping support for Rick Perry and rapidly rising support for Herman Cain.

I suppose this isn’t surprising, considering that Perry has been hammered by all sorts of commentators, professional and amateur, about his poor debate skills and his ideas about integrating children of illegal immigrants into the Texas educational system. Then, just when it seemed Perry was beginning to recuperate, the hunting camp story hit and it was, to quote Rosey Roswell, a bygone Pittsburgh Pirates announcer, “Open the window, Aunt Minnie …” all over again. The opposition had hit a home run right into Perry’s solar plexus.

The numbers? Perry has lost half his support among all conservative voters and sits at 10% with tea partiers. Mitt Romney is stable, but cannot seem to get much above 27% support, no matter what he says, does, or looks like. Herman Cain, on the other hand, is rising rapidly in a lackluster field, now placing in the top three in almost every poll. In this current poll, Cain is second, behind Romney.

As I’ve been writing for some months now, we can forget about Sarah Palin (two-thirds of GOP voters polled do not want her to run), Ron Paul (11% support), Newt Gingrich and Michele Bachmann (tied at 7%), and Jon Huntsman (leave him quietly in his 1% corner, but he’d make a good Secretary of State for the eventual winner). Rick Santorum is at 2%, but I hate to attack a fellow Pennsylvanian and so I’ll only say, Rick, bow out gracefully and give your support to someone who has a chance at winning, and who just might give you an important job if you deliver Pennsylvania and your candidate is elected.

The rest of the poll results are in line with expectations, with the exception that when those polled were asked who they like more, the more they know about them, Cain skyrocketed, leaving the others in the dust, Texan or otherwise, with 70% of those who watched the debates saying the more they know him, the more they like him. Could we be watching a political version of The King and I, with Cain courting his somewhat confused and cautious lady.

There were one-on-one questions, but the results were predictable. Perry is favored with conservatives, but Romney is considered more electable. Cain was not in this set of questions, so we don’t know how he’d have scored against either Romney or Perry on the question of conservative support or electability.

Of course, there is the moment’s big question - will Chris Christies run? He’s going to tell the world in less than an hour, but with the Post-ABC poll numbers showing that only 42% of GOP and GOP-leaning voters polled want him to enter the race, it’s a little like Rhett Butler’s famous line to Scarlett, “Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn.” And, rumors on CNBC and CNN are that Christie will say he is not running.

Where are we poor mortals who need a candidate if we are to take the keys to the White House away from President Obama. In a hard place, to be sure. Obama still beats any of the GOP field, albeit by statistically small margins, and even though 55% of all those polled say anybody will beat him in 2012.

Romney’s strong cards of electability and experience when matched against Perry fall apart when the question of health care is asked.

So, we have a White House that will not Obama’s, come November 1012, if only we can figure out whom to give the keys to. That is not your usual dilemma in politics.

Maybe it has something to do with the “electability” catch-phrase. Electability is not a personal attribute nor is it a quality that can be measured until it has already been proven. So, why is it so important for 2012?

Perhaps because the stakes are so high for America that the choice must almost guarantee success. We’re not looking for a pretty face or a smooth delivery of someone else’s lines. We’re looking for the real thing. A President.

I think that is why Herman Cain is polling so well. He is relaxed, assured without being over-bearing, calm in his confidence that he can weather the storm that is sweeping over us, and he even laughs occasionally - at himself, at the world of politics, at stupidity but in a way so kind and quiet that we understand that he is not vindictive or overwhelmed with winning. He even settled the hunting camp question in a way that was gentlemanly and mature.

Herman Cain is simply there - to reassure us, to comfort us in our time of trial, to give us possible solutions that make sense, to talk with us as if we mattered, to listen and respond without hyperbole. 

That is presidential. The electability will take care of itself.

The Center in American and French Politics

Today, a former member of the Sarkozy conservative government who had left to form his own centrist party and attempt to become a viable candidate for the French presidency in 2012, threw in the towel. He said that his candidacy and new centrist party were causing confusion on the right and would not do much more than weaken the position of Sarkozy, without bringing about the centrist reform he sought, i.e., he was making it easier for the left to win the presidency.

There is, however, another French centrist party formed by another former conservative, but one who never agreed with the Sarkozy world view, who continues his battle to become a viable presidential candidate.

This man, François Bayrou, is a former university history professor and politician of long standing, and he spoke on French TV this evening about his reasons for remaining in the race.

Principally, he said, he wants to from a centrist government because having the “disorganized right” and the “disorganized left” attacking each other incessantly produces nothing that helps the French people.  What Bayrou wants is a coalition of the moderates of all parties who will work on a program of economic and political reformation of France, to make her self-reliant by producing the manufactured and agricultural products her citizens buy and consume, and at the same time, to focus the coalition to work on reforming the government so that its function is to provide the political environment that makes French self-sufficiency possible.

Bayrou’s party receives less than 5% of the vote in French parliamentary elections, and he, himself a presidential candidate in 2007, didn’t make it through to the second round of voting (the first round being an elimination of the weakest candidates).

That may seem terribly removed from the problems confronting America today, but perhaps there is something to be learned.

There is no center in American politics and there hasn’t been since 1964, when Goldwater’s deeply conservative Republican majority drove out all moderates, led by Rockefeller and Scranton. From 1964 to today, that conservative vision has dominated the GOP. Moderates have been forced to change or die, so to speak. I feel sure Mitt Romney, John McCain, George Bush senior, and perhaps even Ronald Reagan, were more moderate than they could admit in order to pass the GOP conservative “litmus tests” of their times.

And, today, when we need a new voice in the GOP, it is not coming from the center but from the populist right - the Tea Party in all its forms.

One could build the same history for the Democratic Party. From Franklin Roosevelt, no Democrat has been able to secure his party’s nomination for president without passing the leftist “litmus tests” of their times. The one exception was Adlai Stevenson, who was sacrificed by the party in the face of an unbeatable Eisenhower.

Yet, Americans do not live and die on the positions - left and right - taken by their parties. They do not really care about most of these obscure arguments. What they want, and need, is better education, more jobs, freedom from burdensome taxes and from excess regulation of their daily lives.

Thomas Jefferson understood this. He wrote, “The policy of the American government is to leave their citizens free, neither restraining nor aiding them in their pursuits.”  

And, another time, Jefferson wrote, “I predict future happiness for Americans if they can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people under the pretence of taking care of them.”

These two ideas capture the American dream, and its capacity to turn sour when government gets too big and forgets to listen.

And, forcing government to bend too far right or left does not help Americans or America. It only increases their frustration with government and makes the concept of “America” less able to compete in the world.  

George Washington got it right. For him government is force and if not restrained by its citizens, it will assume a life of its own, unable to distinguish its goals from the goals of its citizens:

“Government is not reason, it is not eloquence, it is force; like fire, a troublesome servant and a fearful master. Never for a moment should it be left to irresponsible action.”

That may sound like a call to conservative action, but perhaps it is also a call to finding the middle ground, to compromising so that all Americans are better off and freer, so that government does not exist to propagate itself but to serve the people who created it and who must always agree to its continuation.

Carla Bruni-Sarkozy Speaks Out for Dr. Rafah Nachad, Imprisoned in Syria

Today’s story is not pretty, but we need to remember the suffering of the people of Syria in their battle for freedom from oppression of the worst kind.

Rafah Nached, 66, was arrested and put in prison under fake charges by the Syrian authorities under Bashar al-Assad on the 10th of September. The arrest occurred at the Damascus airport as she was boarding a plane to go to Paris to help in her daughter’s giving birth.

Dr. Nachad is the first woman to exercise the practice of psychoanalysis in Syria. She was educated in Paris but worked in Syria and was known internationally for her work. She had overcome cancer but suffers from high blood pressure and heart problems.

When her family was allowed to visit her in the Damascus jail where she is being held, they reported that she was too weak to stand during the visit.

This weekend, Carla Bruni-Sarkozy, wife of the French President, wrote an open letter to Dr. Nachad’s husband, calling on the Syrian regime to release Dr. Nachad without delay.   

Carla Bruni wrote, “…everyone who knows her is worried about her health….It seems inconceivable to me that this clinician, who has devoted her life to therapy and research, could be a threat to the public order or to Syria’s security.”

The First Lady of France added, “Dr. Nachad was an accomplished woman renowned worldwide for her life and work, which is an honor to Syria, to Syrian and Arab women, and to all women everywhere…who recognize today the injustice of her detention.”

Madame Sarkozy ended by expressing her profound admiration and sympathy for Dr. Nachad and her husband, also a doctor. Carla Bruni-Sarkozy also told the world that the little granddaughter born in Paris was named Indya and is doing well.

Madame Sarkozy’s letter was published on line in the website, “La règle du jeu”, of Bernard-Henri Levy, the French philosopher who has taken an active interest in the Arab Spring and especially in Libya.

And so, dear readers, the battle for Syria goes on and the innocent are the pawns - arrested, tortured, killed - by an al-Assad regime that knows no decency in its effort to survive.

Please keep Dr. Nachad and her family in your thoughts and prayers.

A French Presidential Candidate Speaks on behalf of Women

Francois Hollande, the leading candidate in next week’s French Socialist Party primary to choose their candidate for president, held public meetings today with many different interest groups favorable or leaning toward to his candidacy.

After the meeting, Hollande announced that he was thinking of forming a cabinet-level minister of state for women’s rights, reporting directly to the prime minister. The new minister would be responsible for a lateral cut through many women’s issues, from housing and lack of jobs to workplace inequality and violence directed at women.

Before you drift off to sleep, saying ho-hum didn’t we do that a quarter of a century ago - consider this.

France has no central ministry-level women’s affairs office. But, France does have a high incidence of violence against women, a lack of affordable housing for single mothers and working women with modest salaries, and no visible presidential support for women’s rights except for the women appointed to ministerial level posts. President Sarkozy has done a lot in this regard, but the private issues have not been addressed by him or most others in government, and are left to special interest groups.

And, France has an abysmal record when it comes to workplace harassment of women and equal treatment vis-à-vis salaries and climbing the ladder to real success.

I need only say, “Dominique Strauss-Kahn” and you will understand. And, his attitude, while an extreme example, is not uncommon. At least one other senior French public figure at the state level was recently charged with harassment and seeking sexual favors in his private office.

I’m not saying here that we need a full-out war on sexual discrimination. Indeed, the world has come a very long way.

But, France, perhaps simply because she is France with all her richness of sensuality in dress, style, food and sexual mores, has lagged behind. Monsieur Hollande has done French women a great service to mention their problems and give them a fighting chance of changing the sexual equation in France.