Kim JongIl
the longtime leader of North
Korea had died at the age of 69. One issue
is how will this event affect the Presidential race for 2012? Who stands to
come out of this with a stronger or weaker hand?
One school of
thought is this will act as a cold reality check and bring people back to a
reality of a world full of potential dangers and uncertainty. Serious
candidates should benefit with a sudden shift of focus to how complex the world
we live is and what it takes to navigate global political waters.
Those prone to
casually throw around threats of invading and bombing other nations may find
themselves walking very lightly in the short term. Until a sense of stability
returns to North Korea
it would be wise for tough talking politicians to practice some restraint. This
could be the opening that serious individuals need to break through the noise.
President Barack
Obama has shown his foreign policy credentials with decisive actions that are
hard to deny and Republicans now have to show some weight in that even now more
critical arena.
The sad lesson of Herman Cain’s run for President is that it shows what happens when the wrong person gains traction and threatens to rewrite the desired script. When Cain polled at 2%, he was entertaining and no one cared. When Cain vaulted to first place in the polls, speculation about his bubble bursting abounded; it didn’t, so it was punctured.
Herman Cain was not a member of the club, but he was like a Ferrari on the same track with mini vans during the Republican debates and voters were drawn to his direct style and strong personality. It didn’t seem to matter if his proposal made sense, but many of the proposals being presented by other candidates didn’t make sense either.
Herman Cain was not really prepared to be President, but who is. If we needed to be saved from Herman Cain when he was leading in the Presidential polls, then we needed to be saved from Herman Cain when he was at 2%. Cain had issues in his past that came out, but none of it was proven, but it was enough to send him packing.
The timing of the string of allegations becoming public was no coincidence, it was meant to eliminate a wild-card interloper before anything that counted took place. If Cain wants to find the source of the exhumation of the skeletons in his closet then he needs to check the fingerprints from the knife in his back against those of his Republican debate opponents.
I’m no supporter of Cain or his policies, but what happened to him will further insure that many qualified individuals outside of the current political system will shun seeking the Presidency of the United States. The next Republican debate will show that things have returned to normal as the stage will be filled with the usual cast of characters spewing sound bites, applause lines and anything else they think their desired audience wants to hear. Everyone on stage will be someone that either currently or has drawn a government paycheck as they proclaim to want to cut everyone's dependence on big government except their own.
