I know that in a week dedicated to immigration and race issues, it might not be the smartest idea to single out the one black candidate Republicans have running for President as the scariest. Rest assured, it has nothing to do with his race, and unlike when Republicans say they don’t hate Obama because he’s black, this actually isn’t about race.
It’s also not that Herman Cain is technically the worst candidate the GOP has running (that dishonor belongs to Michelle Bachmann). Herman Cain isn’t awful on gay rights issues, saying gay marriage is a state’s rights issue and a federal ban is inappropriate. He’s also one of the few to not sign an anti-abortion pledge. He says he’s anti-choice but that it’s congress’s job to get abortion repealed, not the President’s. Hell, a Presidential candidate that actually knows what the job entails on the GOP side? I’m halfway sold.
Yeah, he’s downright awful on business matters, but so are all the Republican candidates, and I mean all of them. There’s not a single one of them that thinks more regulation is needed to stop another Wall Street meltdown which is what every respected economist in the world thinks. Saying Herman Cain is awful on business issues is just admitting that he’s running in the Republican primary. So what’s so offensive about Herman Cain?
It’s his qualifications. More specifically, the fact that he doesn’t HAVE any. Cain has no government experience whatsoever (in fact the only candidates currently in government are Ron Paul and Michelle Bachmann and they’re lowly representatives). The 2008 election was notable in that Barack Obama was the first senator to win since Kennedy…that’s right, SENATOR was considered lowly for a job primarily dominated by governors and Vice Presidents. Herman Cain has never even been a mayor.
The most notable thing he’s done is be the former CEO of a third string pizza franchise called Godfathers Pizza, which you WILL need to google search for your nearest location because there aren’t many left. [What, the guys running Papa John’s and Pizza Hut weren’t available?] And that scares me.
It scares me because it’s essentially saying ANY business person is better than ANY government person. No matter what kind of success they’ve achieved in the public sector, it’s not as good as any kind of success in the private sector. You’ve got Barack Obama, the sitting president of the United States and former senator, and the guy the GOP thinks is more qualified is the dude that managed a pizza franchise that barely exists anymore.
This is the latest example of forcing an autocratic CEO (cough, Trump, cough) down our throats as the great savior of the federal government…except that Cain doesn’t want to save it, he wants to kill it. Business people don’t have the right skill set to perform well in public office, and thinking that everything should be run like a business is what got us into some of the worst fiscals messes we’re in right now (exorbitant healthcare costs, tax cuts we can’t afford, a shrinking middle-class, the Iraq War). Cain is more of the same problem, not the solution.