Political Event Planning-the Herman Cain Edition

To quote Will Rogers “Everything is changing. People are taking their comedians seriously and the politicians as a joke.” Unfortunately for us in the real world it looks as though his humorous quote is closer to reality than even Will Rogers would’ve thought possible. We now live in a world where a large percentage, especially of young Americans, are getting their news sources from Comedy Central as opposed to the mainstream media. We could debate for days the merits for or against this trend, however, numbers are what they are.

Political Event Planning Is a Nail biting Profession

Event planning in general can be a daunting task. The event planner has to make sure that every aspect of their program is being addressed. And event planners have to rely on suppliers (often they don’t even have a working relationship with them) to get their job done. Anyone who’s had to rely on the efforts of a third party to help them do their job knows how frustrating this process can be. If you’re an event planner and your industry is politics then event planning can be a nightmare. Political event planners, or campaign managers, have to make sure that their candidate (which is really their event) is well-versed in a number of areas. Third-party suppliers aren’t necessarily the nightmare for political event planning. Rather it’s the exposure itself that can take a campaign, or event, off its rails.

Just the other day I was watching the news where Republican presidential candidate, Herman Cain, was conducting an editorial interview with the Milwaukee-Wisconsin Journal Sentinel. The interviewer was asking Mr. Cain whether or not he agreed with Pres. Obama‘s policy on Libya. A typical question on foreign-policy and certainly one that a presidential candidate should be well versed on. Well let’s just say that Mr. Cain had a Sarah Palin moment. After stumbling and a few long silent pauses Mr. Cain started rambling thoughts that were obviously in his head at the time. As a viewer I felt uncomfortable for him. But then I started thinking of how his campaign staff were reacting off camera. Pretty safe to say there was a lot of scrambling going on. Oh and we all know what happened to Sarah Palin’s political career don’t we.

Click here to see CBS Evening News report: “Cain stumbles on Libya question”.

I’m sure that Herman Cain is an intelligent man. He comes from a successful business background by building is very successful pizza franchise chain, Godfather Pizza. And I’m sure his handlers have versed him in foreign affairs policies and that helped frame, what should be, his position on those foreign policies. His staff did say that he’s been keeping a very hectic schedule and functioning on four hours sleep a night. That does sound tough however we want our president to be able to handle that kind of pressure.