To those who had skipped school to be there — he was talking to you, Avi — he offered to write a doctor’s excuse, as he has an honorary doctorate in fine arts. “And most of all,” he said, poking fun at the self-admiration of candidates, “I want to thank Stephen Colbert.”
He promised not to make nasty remarks about any of Cain’s former rivals for the GOP presidential nomination — for example, that “the only difference between Mitt Romney and a statue of Mitt Romney is the statue never changes its position.” Nor would he dream, he said, of suggesting that “Ron Paul’s real name” is the same as that of the guy who “turns straw into gold.” Under no circumstance would he respond to a “gotcha question, like am I interested in open marriage, though I am flattered Newt Gingrich asked me.”
Then “the Her-man with a plan, the Mad Max of the flat tax, my brother from another mother, Herman Cain” appeared in his signature black hat. Not to let Colbert outdo him, Cain said, he sang a tune from “The Wiz,” revealed that the first of his four grandchildren had been born in the year “1-9-9-9” — yes, just like his famous 9-9-9 tax plan! — and once again, as he had during his speech when withdrawing from the campaign, he quoted from the Pokemon movie.
“Mr. Colbert cannot get on the ballot, and I can’t get off of it,” joked the former Godfather’s Pizza chief executive who withdrew from the primary race after facing a series of allegations about sexual harassment and infidelity and making foreign policy gaffes that included not seeming to know what actions President Obama had taken on the Libyan uprising.
One thing Cain has that Colbert doesn’t, according to Cain, is “complexion perfection.” When even a crowd primed to laugh had no reaction, he added, “That was a joke, y’all.”
Throughout Cain’s remarks, protesters from the Occupy movement interrupted with shouts of “Occupy!” and “We are the 99 percent!” On Friday, the movement’s participants were occupying courthouses across the country to mark Saturday’s second anniversary of the Supreme Court decision that made super PACs possible.
In Cain’s telling, it was his challenge to the status quo that caused the media to run him out of the race: “Someone called me David going up against Goliath, and that’s what happened.”
Though Colbert had asked the crowd to vote for Cain, Cain asked them not to follow Colbert’s advice: “I’m going to ask you not to vote for Herman Cain,” said Cain, fond as ever of referring to himself in the third person. “Because every vote counts.”
Near the end of the event, Colbert said that “pundits keep asking me if this is a joke,” but if that’s the case, of course, “then they are saying our entire campaign finance system is a joke!” (Nah, couldn’t be.) As Abraham Lincoln said at Gettysburg, Colbert added, “Give me some money!”
We must stand for corporations, he said, mock solemnly, “because they have no legs.”
In his final message to the crowd, Colbert urged those attending to fulfill their civic duty. Whether they voted for Cain, as Colbert had asked them to do, or not for Cain, as Cain had asked, the most important thing was that they vote.
Afterward, Amanda Brueser, a Republican and a freshman at the college who grew up here, said she might end up voting for Cain if she can’t decide among the candidates.
“When he broke it down, it made more sense,” she said of Colbert’s pitch against super PACs. “And, of course, it was just funny.”
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