The Tantalizing Lure of the Outsider Candidate
By MATT BAI
NYT
In what may yet be the last turn in Herman Cain’s bizarre journey through the world of presidential politics, the candidate will return home to Atlanta this weekend for a meeting with his wife and family, so they can decide whether it still makes sense for Mr. Cain to continue his campaign.
Of course, if we’re going to be real about this, it’s hard to see how a chief executive of a pizza chain, with little political experience, decided that he could win the nomination of the Republican Party in the first place. That Mr. Cain has come as far as he has, only to be knocked around in recent weeks by a wave of personal accusations and embarrassing policy moments, tells you a lot about the craving for genuine outsiders in our politics — and why they so rarely succeed.
What we get, more often, are insiders pretending to be outsiders, and outsiders pretending to have mastered the inside game.
The obsession with outsiderness in both parties can be traced to the period dominated by Vietnam and Watergate, when a generation of Americans seemed to decide — and who could blame them, really? — that institutional Washington needed a serious intervention.
(More here.)
NYT
In what may yet be the last turn in Herman Cain’s bizarre journey through the world of presidential politics, the candidate will return home to Atlanta this weekend for a meeting with his wife and family, so they can decide whether it still makes sense for Mr. Cain to continue his campaign.
Of course, if we’re going to be real about this, it’s hard to see how a chief executive of a pizza chain, with little political experience, decided that he could win the nomination of the Republican Party in the first place. That Mr. Cain has come as far as he has, only to be knocked around in recent weeks by a wave of personal accusations and embarrassing policy moments, tells you a lot about the craving for genuine outsiders in our politics — and why they so rarely succeed.
What we get, more often, are insiders pretending to be outsiders, and outsiders pretending to have mastered the inside game.
The obsession with outsiderness in both parties can be traced to the period dominated by Vietnam and Watergate, when a generation of Americans seemed to decide — and who could blame them, really? — that institutional Washington needed a serious intervention.
(More here.)
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