Here’s the Herminator

By GAIL COLLINS
NYT

You may have heard that Herman Cain, the former chief of Godfather’s Pizza, has become the latest in a list of peculiar front-runners for the Republican presidential nomination. Perhaps the Tea Party wing is just expressing its hostility toward Mitt Romney. Perhaps there’s just something peculiar about the Tea Party.

Either way, my mission is clear. In keeping with our ongoing project of reviewing the literary output of the Republican candidates for president, today we’re going to take a look at “This Is Herman Cain! My Journey to the White House.”

Cain, who has published a bunch of other books, appears to have gone to the Newt Gingrich School of Perpetual Authorship. He’s padded his 240 pages with a couple of speeches, a list of awards and honors that include the Rotary Club’s 1994 Omahan of the Year Award, and a convoluted Leadership History going back to the student government of Archer High School.

However, the core of the Cain story is how he rose in the world of business to become C.E.O. of a pizza chain whose name sounds kind of like an ethnic slur.

(More here.)