Is the Herman Cain campaign a publicity stunt that got out of hand?



Cain is up to 31 percent in the new CBS/New York Times poll. Could this suggest to Cain and Co. that he could actually be president in 2012 and that was never the actual intention of his campaign?



The strange new video of his agent appears to be a parody of campaign videos or of presidential campaigns in general, and this suggestion is advanced at the end when the agent inexplicably lights up a cigarette. And Cain enters with a mischievous smile.



The video suggests not so much that Cain shouldn't be taken seriously as a candidate for president as that he never intended to be taken seriously as a candidate and never hoped or wanted to be president. It was all a motivational speaker's self-promotion gag that got out of hand. A prank, perhaps to comment on the tawdry and devolved “American Idol” quality of a serious presidential campaign handed over to media promoters, ad men and pop-culture mavens.

