Via "First Read," I see belatedly that RedState.com's Erick Erickson characterized Herman Cain's response Thursday night to a question about his abysmal lack of political experience for the nation's highest political office -- other presidents have been professional pols, and "How's that working out for you?" said Cain -- as "a brilliant defense" (my emphasis).
This was, as well, according to Erickson, "a golden moment."
The children of the right are not only easily amused and effortlessly impressed, they still seem to believe, as they did with George W. Bush, that gravitas in high office is a net negative. To them, ideology compensates for everything, which is why, to their minds, a pizza guy for a presidential candidacy is as good as, say, a law professing U.S. senator.
The last GOP presidential nominee with no history of political experience was businessman-lawyer Wendell Willkie, in 1940, who at least had the good sense and humility to write to a friend a few months before that his popular consideration for such an office was "a joke"; furthermore, he wrote, could the body politic "even consider the election of a utility executive with an office in the precincts of Wall Street for constable, let alone president?"
Well, not really. He lost 449 to 82 electoral votes. A few days later he admonished his party "not [to] fall into the partisan error of opposing things just for the sake of opposition." Even later he went on to lambaste his party's isolationist wing for doing just that, and he enthusiastically represented his old foe, Franklin D. Roosevelt, overseas.
Can one even conceive the success of roughly such a man in today's Republican Party? Cain of course is a joke and will remain one. But I'm sure that question is keeping Jon Huntsman up at night. And considering the immaturity level and intellectual deficiencies of "grassroots" conservative activists out there, I don't think Huntsman will much like the answer.