Chamblee54

Herman Cain is running for President. Recent polls show him doing very well. Mr. Cain has come to the point in his campaign where the press gets rough. This is an important part of the process. If he cannot handle a few “irrelevant” questions on MSNBC, then what will happen when the opposition party in Congress tries to block your every move?
As PG has mentioned before, he does not like Herman Cain. PG listened to him on the radio, before the Presidential run, and usually had to change the channel within five minutes. In the spirit of fairness, PG will watch the video of an interview with Mr. Cain.
A controversial part of the discussion regards Mr. Cain’s participation, or lack thereof, in the civil rights movement. First he says he was in high school, and if he had been in college he might have participated, Then we learn that he started college ( at Morehouse, near Downtown Atlanta) in 1963. Mr. Cain tries to change the subject to talking about the “failed policies” of the Obama administration.
At 10:51, there was a twitter question: “How can you say that being gay is a choice? Did you choose to be straight?” “It’s a difference of opinion. Next question please.”
At 17:07 comes a question that PG has wondered about:”after avoiding the war in Vietnam, why should you be commander in chief?” After graduation from Morehouse, Mr. Cain took a job with the Department of the Navy as a mathematician. To hear him say it, the draft board said they would prefer him crunching numbers to fighting. He then says that he made himself available to the draft lottery, and his number was not called. (The bs detector is ringing off the wall. Are the lottery numbers from 1968/1969 available online, to compare with Mr. Cain’s birthday? Who is the official with the draft board who gave him this clearance? These claims may be impossible to prove or disprove. It is beyond doubt that Mr. Cain’s lips were moving.) UPDATE: PG checks out the claims.
The issue of military service comes up for every Presidential candidate who was cannon fodder age during ‘Nam. Bill Clinton dodged the issue and got elected. George W. Bush won two elections over Vietnam Veterans. Mr. Cain does get points for knowing this issue would come up.
Mr. O’Donnell has a comeback. He asks why Mr. Cain did not wait to be drafted, but sign up like John Kerry. Mr. Cain:”Well Lawrence, we have a difference of opionion. I would like to move on to talk about how we are going to boost our economy.” He proceeds to promote his 999 plan. PG is not an economist, and has not studied this plan. He suspects that it is a lot of flashy talk with a clever title. It sounds like Fair Tax lite.
HT for this story goes to Andrew Sullivan. He has two links which shed some light on this story. Conor Friedersdorf provides a handy transcript of the Vietnam part of the interview.
O’Donnell: I misread your book and its references to the Navy. I thought you served in the Navy. You’re now telling me you didn’t. Can you explain how you avoided military service during the Vietnam War and during the draft, and why you should be commander in-chief if you did successfully avoid service during the war that came during what would have been your war years? After avoiding the Vietnam War, why should you be commander-in-chief?
Cain: Lawrence, you know, do you stay up nights coming up with the wording of these questions?
O’Donnell: Just thought of that one now when I heard you didn’t serve in the Navy or the military during Vietnam. How did you do that?
Cain: You say, “How did I avoid the Vietnam War?” I wasn’t trying to avoid the Vietnam War! Here’s what happened, Lawrence. I was working in a critical area called exterior ballistics. I worked on something called rocket assisted projectiles for the Department of the Navy. It was my local board in Atlanta, Georgia, that told me, “We would rather have you continue to do that analytical work, to help the Navy, rather than us draft you.” Secondly, when they had the lottery, I made myself available. The year that they had the lottery for the draft, they did not draft me because they didn’t get to my number. So I think that’s a poor choice of words on your part to say that I “avoided” the Vietnam War. I made myself available to my country, and they did not draft me. The rest of the time I was serving my country in a critical role called exterior ballistic analysis. So I am offended with your choice of words in terms of what I was doing during the Vietnam War.
O’Donnell: I am offended on behalf of all the veterans of the Vietnam War who joined, Mr. Cain. The veterans who did not wait to be drafted, like John Kerry, who joined. They didn’t sit there and wait to find out what their draft board was going to do. They had the courage to join, and to go, and to fight that war. What prevented you from joining? And what gives you the feeling, after having made that choice, you should be the commander in chief?
Mr. Friedersdorf is dumbfounded by this exchange. He is a younger man, and probably does not remember the domestic turmoil of the Vietnam war. There was something called Selective Service in those days, which meant you got a letter from Uncle Sam telling you to go in the Army or go to jail. Many of these men went to fight in Vietnam, where we lost 59,000 men. (55,000 more than in Iraq, with an all volunteer force.) Unless, of course, your draft board wanted you to work on exterior ballastic analysis.
The second link is to an email that a reader sent Mr. Sullivan. It is presented below. The pictures  are from ” The Special Collections and Archives,Georgia State University Library”
I have to admit being horrified at how horrified people are at Lawrence’s interview with Herman Cain. He treated Mr. Cain far more politely than I or virtually any other African-American I know would have given the circumstances. And the circumstances are these. My father attended the University of Texas roughly during the same time period. UT was desegregated at the time, but he has no fond memories of the school, even though any troubles he experienced there were minor in comparison to others. He would eventually go on to Rice University (where he teaches today) for his PhD as the first Black man ever to attend that institution. His admission was delayed a year because White Alumni sued Rice to prevent his entry. He also had to deal with a Professor in Applied Math who publicly vowed that any Black student who enrolled in his class would start at a “C” and head downward.
Still, as angry as he remains to this day over what relatively little happened to him during his stays at both Texas schools, he still found time to test restaurants, because he knew it was his about him and his future children. He was doing it for me. He also met another student at the time who was also testing restaurants while attending Texas Southern University. Her name was Claudette Smith. I know her today as Mom.
You may argue that Herman Cain had a right not to participate in the Civil Rights Movement, and that may be true. But here’s the problem: he’s holding himself up as an example of, if not the very pinnacle of, the black community. (Just ask him, he’ll be glad to tell you). He has gone so far as to suggest that Black People who do not support him (not give him a fair hearing, mind you, but out-and-out support him) have been brainwashed by the Democratic Party.
May I suggest that my Father and Mother were not brainwashed? May I suggest that they saw with their own eyes who was supporting Civil Rights and who wasn’t; and their allegiance forevermore was aligned with the Democratic party.
And for the record, yes, there were Southern Democrats who voted against the 1965 Civil Rights Act. They long ago switched parties and joined Herman Cain’s party, the Republicans. I’m sure even Mr. Cain remembers Lyndon Johnson signing the Civil Rights Act, and saying he was delivering the South to the Republicans for the next 40 years. He was wrong. Try 60-70.
The horrific part of the interview which apparently did not catch your eye, was Lawrence’s first asking Mr. Cain if he wanted to back off that “brainwashing” statement. Mr. Cain did not. With him questioning my intelligence as a African-American, I had a right to know where he stood in relation to the community he was questioning I had a right to know what kind of African-American he was, and yes that is something I can judge given the questions Lawrence O’Donnell asked rather haltingly. I had a right to know what he had given to the cause. Because if he had stood with my parents, if he had marched with my parents, then African-Americans as a whole would have shrugged when he called us “brainwashed”. At least, we would have decided, he earned the right.
But he didn’t. He didn’t march. He didn’t sit-in. He didn’t test. He didn’t want to get involved, because frankly, it was probably more important to him to ingratiate himself to his white oppressors. I’m sorry to come off sounding like a member of the Black Panther Party, but we see people like Mr. Cain all the time in the African-American community. The ones who think they’re better than the rest of us, smarter, and the only ones fit to lead, the only ones fit to be heard from.