Whose fault is poverty?

Now that he’s registering a pulse in presidential polls, Herman Cain is getting more attention when he says something.

Today he said something that will probably define his candidacy, for however long it should last.

“Don’t blame Wall Street, don’t blame the big banks,” he told the Wall St. Journal in an interview. “If you don’t have a job and you are not rich, blame yourself!”

“When I was growing up, I was blessed with parents who didn’t teach me to be jealous of anybody, or to be envious of anybody. It’s not a person’s fault because they succeeded, it’s a person’s fault because they fail,” Cain said.

Cain was reacting to the Wall Street protests, which he said are organized to distract the nation from the “failed policies” of President Obama.

His comment, however, may serve the same purpose because it may spawn a renewed debate over whether it’s the fault of poor people that they’re poor, and whether the nation’s 14 million people without work have no one to blame but themselves.