Well, I am not dead and have been busy at work on getting a website up. Citizens 4 Cain.
I know it is pretty early in the election cycle for the 2012 elections for the Presidency, but I feel that with the way the economy is going and the utter lack of business sense in DC today, we need someone like Herman Cain in the White House.
While he was in St Louis, I got to meet him at a Tea Party, and we got to chat a little bit, nothing serious, but got to know a little about him. While talking one on one, he is very sincere and well spoken. But when he gets up on a podium, he is a different man. And he commands the room or crowd like no one I have seen in a long time. He says what people like me and many in the Tea Party Movement have been saying over the past year and a half. He has been a proven problem solver in all the places he has been. The last was bringing Godfather’s Pizza from the brink of bankruptcy.
We need someone with business sense and someone that is a problem solver. And we need someone like that in 2012
Come on by the Citizens 4 Cain site, and join with others to see Herman Cain take the oath of office to become the 45 President of the United States of America.
Moe Lane
PG DeFreese
Victoria Coates
Daniel Horowitz
Dan Spencer
I like and respect Herman Cain
reddog53 (Diary) Wednesday, January 12th at 8:37PM EST (link)I’ve heard him speak, and he is dynamic, creative and a true problem solver. He has a proven record, and is developing a terrific following. And he comes across as genuine, with a solid character.
But I don’t understand the idea that businessmen need to run the government. Government is not a business, but it is an enterprise that needs to be run well. We hear about Mitt Romney and his experience with business as well, and his experience as Governor seems to show business acumen is not the panacea that many believe.
Most executives who rise in business develop many of the skills that are needed to be a successful President. But while they may have to deal with a Board of Directors and investors and regulators, few have to tangle fully with the Congress (without benefit of lobbyists) or worry about running law enforcement and defense at the same time — and all the while deflecting the opposition party and unfavorable press. In short, business experience is useful, but I don’t think it’s sufficient in itself.
There have been other business leaders in office: Herbert Hoover; Charles Percy, former governor of Illinois and commercial golden boy. Other states have also had a number of business leaders turn Governor, with mixed results. We’ve also had a string of business leaders as Secretary of Defense, and their record is also a mixed bag. All in all, not a real great track record.
And world events have a way of demanding that whatever skills or strengths a given President has, he or she will need to ‘grow into’ others. For example, FDR truly did not want to be a wartime President, but events dictated that he had to become one. Same goes for LBJ — he wanted a War on Poverty, not Viet Nam. Nixon wanted to focus on foreign policy and strategy, but the domestic economy demanded more of his attention.
We may desperately want the next President to be able to fix the ‘business’ part of running our government, but the President has to be prepared to manage it all.
Our task is to help surface the individual with the best mixture of qualities to assume the office. E Pluribus Unum had a great post about that earlier today.
Are you serious?
traversecityconservative (Diary) Wednesday, January 12th at 10:37PM EST (link)Government is not a business??! The government has jobs to do, different departments, customers, employees, money coming in, money going out, payrolls, benefits, etc…It IS a business and a president needs to be the honest, inspiring leader of that business with common sense and direction. A leader who actually wants the best for the entire country, not certain parts of it. By all means, yes, let’s keep electing POLITICIANS because they do such a great job. A good president is a good leader. What we have now is a “business” that is screwing over about 70% of its customer base to help the other 30%. What we have now is a business that is not making a profit, has corruption and inefficiency at every level. What we have now is a business with a corrupt, inept board of directors (Congress) only making decisions for their own benefit.
Nowhere in my discussion did I advocate electing Politicians
reddog53 (Diary) Wednesday, January 12th at 11:01PM EST (link)And I did admit that government has functions that are similar to businesses….but government exists to transform wealth (taxes) into services — business exists to transform services into a profit (wealth).
These are not necessarily the same thing, although at some levels both share the need for rational processes and decision making. As I suggested above, there have been many businessmen that have become elected leaders that didn’t automatically do a great job: Mayor Bloomberg in New York for example. David McNamara in the Defense Department in the 60s is another.
What we truly have now is a government that is out of its boundaries, run by mostly elite bureaucrats and academics who don’t know what they’re doing because they have become focused on gaining power, not serving the public. But that can also be said of large corporations that lose their focus on serving the customer as well; General Motors went for decades building crappy cars and expecting a combination of slick marketing and Congressional influence to keep their place in the market.
Government is not supposed to make a “profit” — any government which is running a consistent surplus is overtaxing its citizens. I agree that government is supposed to be effective stewards of the taxes we provide it, but this can mean doing things that commercial companies would not do..
Government is truly inefficient in many cases, and sometimes negligently so. But ‘efficient’ government would not necessarily have the capacity to respond to emergencies or nontypical events. A person steeped in business would tend to remove inventories of ‘un-needed’ material as an unacceptable cost; but sometimes governments need huge inventories of spare things like food, water and shelter to handle emergencies (Katrina, Haiti earthquake, etc). In another example, the City of Atlanta has made the correct business decision to not own a large fleet of snow plows and such, but this week, as a result, the city is pretty well shut down –because they were inefficient and incomplete in preparing for another way to deal with the need (through contracts with private firms, etc).
Congress is not our ‘board of directors’ — no company would survive with a Board of 435 people. I agree that they have become corrupt and self serving, and that is why I agree with term limits and was a supporter of the TEA Party rallies that sought to change some members of Congress.
The government has a wide variety of jobs to do. It takes a unique set of skills to do it well, and I agree that experience in business is a big part of that. All that I am saying is that those skills, while necessary, are not sufficient.
So what would you define
lineholder (Diary) Wednesday, January 12th at 11:16PM EST (link)as being sufficient experience?
Well, there's the rub...you can't define it as much as 'see' it.
reddog53 (Diary) Wednesday, January 12th at 11:24PM EST (link)There have been 44 Presidents to date, and not all of them have been superstars. Some have ‘resumes’ that would make us gasp in the modern era (like Lincoln for one, Truman for another in some ways), only to rise up and do a wonderful job.
Some had the right ‘resume’ and didn’t do so well…
The qualities that we need in a leader were well described in a couple of earlier posts by EPU and Vassar Bushmills, among others. I lean toward looking for someone with significant experience outside government as well as some experience within it.
Mostly I look for someone who has been tested by events to forge a character and worldview that represents the best of America — not the best at fundraising or the best at making speeches. And most of all, I look for someone with enough depth of character and self confidence that he or she is the same whether in private or public — intelligent, energetic, polite and without ‘airs’….
If that is your criteria,
lineholder (Diary) Wednesday, January 12th at 11:30PM EST (link)will you consider being open-minded in considering Cain? Take a look at this history and how he has approached the challenges he has faced in the past.
He does have the qualities you’ve mentioned, but a lot of people just aren’t familiar with that aspect of who Cain is.
foreign policy?
Getting_Back_to_Basics Wednesday, January 12th at 11:32PM EST (link)I do not know enough about his foreign policy views. I think there is room for a strong conservative who will be honest that the US needs to unwind its commitment to Afghanistan. Is Cain a neocon or a paleocon when it comes to foreign policy? Where do his foreign policy views place him?
Cain on foreign policy
lineholder (Diary) Wednesday, January 12th at 11:52PM EST (link)Here’s a link
http://dailycaller.com/2010/10/11/potential-presidential-candidate-herman-cain-speaks-to-thedc-about-where-he-stands-on-domestic-foreign-policy/
What do you think of it?.
Pretty general.
NightTwister (Diary) Thursday, January 13th at 9:21AM EST (link)Any specifics? I looked at the campaign website, but there’s nothing there.
The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter. – Winston Churchill
Resume
Black River Wolf (Diary) Thursday, January 13th at 1:27AM EST (link)If you want to get a look at his resume take a look:
http://citizens4cain.com/site/blog/2011/01/13/herman-cain-announces/
“In my many years I have come to a conclusion that one useless man is a shame,
two is a law firm, and three or more is a congress.”—-John Adams
Congress is not the board of directors?
traversecityconservative (Diary) Thursday, January 13th at 9:33AM EST (link)Really? They define the rules of the game for the general members of the business (us) and the direction that the “business” will take. Yes, you are right that the government is not supposed to make a profit but it needs to break even and actually provide the services it’s obligated to do (even though it never does). The only benefit to currently being “in government” when running for president is that you know how to bribe people, get around rules, make payoffs and live the corrupt life within the system. How has that worked out for us so far? Would be nice to have someone in the presidency who is either un-schooled in the corruption or unwilling to be? All I need to know about a president is if he/she is able to lead and what decisions he will make/what his/her ideology is. And another big thing is whether that candidate will sell out conservatism because I’ve seen it done among a lot of our “candidates.”
A great friend of Cain died at age 43 yesterday: Royal Marshall, Boortz producer - LINK
Mike gamecock DeVine (Diary) Saturday, January 15th at 11:37PM EST (link)http://www.ajc.com/news/atlanta/royal-marshall-boortz-radio-805217.html
Mike DeVine’s Examiner.com, Charlotte Observer and The Minority Report columns
“One man with courage makes a majority.” – Andrew Jackson