There are a lot of advantages to being rich. But one of the few disadvantages is the honest day-to-day input from friends, coworkers, and family we all take for granted. That simple feedback is often non-existent for the very wealthy. They could literally propose anything or say anything and there would be a line of people stretching around the block waiting to praise their insightful brilliance. That’s the sense I get with Herman Cain when I read stuff like this:

But Cain said the “offensive” criticism is just a familiar tactic to marginalize him. He suggested his status as a prominent black conservative makes him a target, but said the attacks will not succeed. “I left the Democratic plantation a long time ago. And all that they try to do when someone like me … the only tactic that they have to try and intimidate me and shut me up is to call me names, and this sort of thing. It just simply won’t work,” Cain said.

The fact is much of what Cain says would be more at home coming out of the mouth of a cartoon character like Dale Gribble than a sitting US President. But who in Cain’s inner circle is going to tell him that? Cain has probably lost the tools and the people the rest of us take for granted in distinguishing between legit criticism and mere griping, and as a political neophyte odds are he is still stuck in the comfortable, seductive notion that everything he says or does is somehow brilliant. That’s easy to do when you are rich and it doesn’t help to have scores of political sycophants egging Cain on at every move and syllable.