A clever and credible second-tier candidate who rises to the top through a series of unexpected fortuities, as Cain did in October, recognizes his good fortune and tries to capitalize on it. That might have been the time, for example, for Cain to schedule a major address, on foreign policy, say, attracting some establishment Republican mandarins who would be willing to vouch for the candidate’s character and seriousness of purpose to stand at his side. But the Cain operation didn’t think to do this sort of thing.

The political press ascribes such failures to Cain’s inexperience, but his real problem is his vanity. An accurate assessment of his rise would have attributed it to conservative voters’ distrust of Mitt Romney first and foremost, and their looking to Cain for some of the reasons that have been noted here. But This Is Herman Cain! persuades me that the candidate saw his ascendance as inevitable, an electorate finally but merely coming to its senses. So he didn’t think he had to do anything more to close the deal.