Herman Cain Sees <?xml:namespace prefix = st1 ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags" />America's Economy as a Problem He Can Solve
 
Herman Cain's ascendancy to frontrunner status in the Republican presidential primary was front page, lead story, headline news in The Wall Street Journal and to the Republican establishment. <?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" />
It was also big news to liberals like David Bositis, a white guy at a liberal think tank in Washington whose website bio claims he is an expert on black politics and voting. Bositis has voiced his expert opinion that, "Cain is not going anywhere. He is not qualified to be president."
Most people who have read Cain's resume would disagree.
As a child, Herman Cain rode to town on Saturdays in his grandfather's wagon drawn by mules. Cain's father juggled three jobs as a chauffeur, janitor and barber and his mother cleaned houses in order to buy their own home and to help put their two sons through college.
Representative of the century of changes that occurred from grandfather to grandson, Herman Cain began his own professional career as a rocket scientist. Cain earned a B.A. in mathematics from Morehouse College and then, while working full time as a ballistics-analyst for the U.S. Navy, he obtained a master's in computer science from Purdue University.
After getting his master's degree, he was recruited by the Pillsbury Company and given charge of Burger King's 400 financially troubled franchise stores in the Philadelphia region. Within three years, the region went from being Burger King's least profitable to the company's most profitable.
Cain's Burger King success led Pillsbury to appoint him President and CEO of another of its failing subsidiaries – Godfather's Pizza.
In fourteen months, Herman Cain moved the pizza company from the brink of bankruptcy to profitability. When Pillsbury then announced they planned to sell the Godfather's subsidiary, Cain organized a group of investors and purchased it in 1988.
Cain has been elected to the board of directors of Aquila, Nabisco, Whirlpool, Reader's Digest, and AGCO Inc. He's been president of the National Restaurant Association and chairman of the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City.
On October 1st, Herman Cain overwhelmingly won the National Federation of Republican Women's Convention straw poll with 48.9% of the vote. Rick Perry's second place finish wasn't even close with 14.1%, and Mitt Romney came in third place with only 13.3%.
In the three most recent nationwide polls, Cain is tied for first place in the Rasmussen poll, ahead by 4% in the NBC/Wall Street Journal poll, and way out ahead by 8% in the Public Policy Polling results.
"The surge is real," says Todd Domke, a Republican political analyst. "A lot of liberal pundits make the mistake of thinking this is just a fluke, but the more conservatives have seen him in action, the more they like him.''
In an interview on NPR, Cain said, "If you look at what has allowed me to surge, it is because of the substance and the ideas and the specific solutions that I have put on the table."
Cain believes his success in the polls is primarily because of his 9-9-9 tax plan which would replace the existing federal tax structure with a 9% flat corporate income tax rate, a 9% flat individual income tax rate, and a 9% national sales tax.
London's Guardian newspaper sums it up with this quote by Cain: "America has problems. I'm a problem solver. That's why I'm running."