NPR, Democratic Underground, CBS, et al have found their choice for the Republican to run against Barack Obama in 2012 – Herman Cain.
Herman worked until recently as a host on WSB in Atlanta (owned by the family of 1920 Democratic Party VP candidate James Cox). Herman’s claim to fame in his resume is he was “CEO of Godfather’s Pizza”. You may also hear him from time to time filling in for Neal Boortz, or doing a show on the American Family religious network, founded by Donald Wildmon.
A quick version of Herman Cain’s CEO career. Pillsbury back in the 1970s thought it wanted to be in the restaurant business. Herman was a VP of something or other at the headquarters in Minneapolis / St Paul, not exactly a hotbed of Conservative politics. He went from corporate VP to being a district manager of Burger King’s stores in the Philadelphia area, which were unprofitable.
Cain did a good enough job turning around the Burger King stores, they put him in charge of Godfathers Pizza. Godfather’s pizza was mostly a franchise operation – only a small portion of the stores were company owned. Pillsbury did succeed in spinning off Godfather’s Pizza in 1988 and as a bonus got the new company to take Herman Cain off their hands. He left Godfather’s in 1996 to head the National Restaurant Association, the lobbying group in Washington DC that pressures the Federal Government for laws to protect their interests. He is not a “Washington outsider”.
Herman Cain didn’t found Godfather’s, he didn’t build the chain, he didn’t arrange the financing and build the marketing campaign., he didn’t have any of his own money in the business. He was the designated pilot to fly the plane into the ground. Without the backing of Pillsbury and with Cain pushing franchise operators to change their operations to try his “experiments” like fruit pizza, mass defections of franchisees occurred. The chain still exists but much smaller than it was 20 years ago.
So why is Herman Cain running?
– He thinks blacks will vote a Black Republican?
– He wants Obama to win in 2012?
– God told him he needed to do it?
– He’s fighting for Conservative principles, even if it means scaring away the whites who will never elect a Black as President?
– He wants to prove that Republicans are racists?
So the rest of the candidates will now have to campaign on tippy toes, so as to not to challenge Cain’s ideas or lack of experience and be called out as racists (it won”t work)… There is nothing about this that is a good thing. All you have to do is look at who is pushing him to ramp up his campaign. The racial guilt that led to Michael Steele to be appointed as RNC chairman who almost single handedly destroyed the RNC should have been a warning to get over the guilt. Time for a Ken Hamblin certificate of absolution.
Cain was also chairman of the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City in the 1990’s.
Woohoo! Thanks for that detail. I missed it in my look at his bio a few months ago. Perhaps he had left that off, or maybe I just didn’t read it closely enough. If I had read it, that would have caught my attention.
Each of the district “banks” has a board of directors made up of a combination of an equal number of bankers, business people, and people representing the public. In the big scheme of things, the only “Fed” that really matters is the New York City branch.
Well, he and Ron Paul could have an interesting conversation or two. I’m somewhere in between – I don’t think an audit will find much. Since there is only one Fed, there are no generally accepted accounting procedures for how to run a Federal Reserve. The auditor would basically say “Well, they told us the rules, and yes, they’re following their own rules!”.
What the Fed needs is transparency. Who is borrowing money and on what terms? Do any board members have conflicts of interest in benefitting form the decisions they are making? Are they using non-public information to make their own investment plans? [Mr Obvious asking]