Required reading?

There’s any number of things I could be commenting on this evening, but tonight I’m going to talk about…books.

A story caught my eye yesterday and reminded me of something I read a few days ago about a man in a similar predicament. It seems that taxpayers have ponied up over $70,000 to buy copies of President Obama’s books, translated to a number of languages for usage in various embassies around the world. While the Washington Times story by Jim McElhatton wryly notes that the State Department didn’t spend any money buying books by George W. Bush or Bill Clinton, I’m just waiting for the first crank to tell me that the former wasn’t smart enough to write a book. (Yet no one is doubting he wrote Decision Points like some question Obama’s handiwork. They just marvel at Bush’s compilation skills.)

But the timing of this story is interesting after another news story broke last week regarding potential GOP challenger Herman Cain and his campaign purchasing books he wrote from a company he controls. (Well, if these books are self-published, who else would he buy them from – Mitt Romney?) The obvious question was whether Cain profited from the purchase, but no one is really asking how President Obama is being enriched by the taxpayers picking up the tab for his book. Presumably in Cain’s case, the books are being distributed to voters to build up campaign awareness. (Heck, I’m a Cain supporter and no one has sent me a copy. Maybe they don’t feel the need to since I’m in his camp.)

A little-known fact about Cain, though, is that he’s been a professional writer for some time – he has a weekly newspaper column syndicated through a small company called the North Star Writers Group. While that company is Michigan-based and concentrates on Michigan state issues, Cain obviously writes there with a national perspective. Yet no one is complaining about what he’s presumably paid to write for that for-profit enterprise. On the other hand, his radio talk show is on hiatus until the resolution of this race.

But to me there’s a difference between spending money like Cain’s campaign has, even if there’s a little bit of self-profit accrued there, and spending taxpayer dollars on President Obama’s books. After all, those of us who donate to Cain’s effort are doing so of our own free will while there’s more of a risk in crossing the IRS.

Because Herman Cain isn’t in public office, he’s not using the trappings of office for personal gain. In fact, while many criticize the fact he’s doing a book tour so late in the campaign, I can see an argument that such a move is a shrewd one in that he’s making his a national campaign rather than focusing on two small states. The polls at the moment suggest that Herman will do well enough, at least in Iowa, that he doesn’t necessarily need to spend a lot of time there. One can think of the book tour as very early campaigning in Florida, Georgia, Texas, and the Washington D.C. area.

Sure it’s unconventional, and perhaps the only worse thing to do insofar as those elitists are concerned would be to have the book signings at a Walmart. (For all I know, maybe they are.) But we’ll know in the coming days how well the strategy holds up.

Author: Michael

It's me from my laptop computer.