It's the end of the line for the hit (for a month anyway) situation comedy The Herman Cain Show-as something worth tuning into, anyway. As the obituaries are rushed to press, most of the experts will chalk the demise up to the candidate's inexperience and his staffs ineptitude. It's not that those things aren't true, but they miss the real point. The real culprit is Cain's bottomless vanity, and even though he may no longer be very interesting, there is a lesson in his collapse for all the candidates. First, on the subject of the Herminator (a nickname he seems to have bestowed on himself, which is always a bad sign). I urge you, when you next find yourself in a bookstore, to pick up a copy of his new-ish book, This Is Herman Cain!, and flip through it. You need only reach page three to read how he "redefined campaign history" (he may have, but not in the way he means). Then flip ahead to the closing chapter to read how Cain will handle his first 90 days in office. The tone of serene self-adulation leaches so fulsomely out of every page that it practically gets on your hands. Many pundits have assumed that Cain wasn't really "serious" about his candida-cy-that he was just trying to raise his profile, sell some books. But the book, it's clear from page one, is not the work of man who wasn't serious about his candidacy.
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