T he 2012 presidential race is already shaping up to be one of the most exhilarating ones yet. With President Barack Obama’s poll numbers at record lows, the Republican Party is drawing a large amount of attention in what is sure to be a whirlwind campaign. We are roughly 13 months away from Election Day, yet there is still a lot to be decided in the Republican race. One nominee who wasn’t expected to show any promising signs of hope was Herman Cain. But after winning a number of recent straw polls, Cain has begun to emerge as one of the GOP’s top candidates.
Herman Cain is the son of two hard-working, low-income parents. His father worked three jobs as a barber, janitor and chauffer, while his mother was a housekeeper. Cain received his undergraduate degree from Morehouse College with a degree in mathematics and went on to receive his master’s degree from Purdue University while working as a civilian employee for the Navy.
After graduating, Cain moved back to Atlanta and went to work for Coca-Cola before moving to become the regional vice president of Pillsbury’s Burger King division. Just a few years later Cain advanced within Pillsbury to become the CEO of Godfather’s Pizza, a company that was teetering on the brink of bankruptcy. In just over a year, Cain turned the company around.
Some might wonder what a man with only business experience is doing running for President. With so many Americans upset with all facets of the government and political games, Herman Cain seems to provide a solution to at least some of these problems.
With our country on the brink of another financial meltdown, perhaps Cain is just what this country needs. Cain’s economic plan, the 9-9-9 Plan, is a simple, yet genius plan. The plan calls for 9 percent national sales tax, 9 percent business flat tax and a 9 percent individual flat tax minus any charitable deductions one might have made over that past year. Under this plan, individuals would be able to know just how much they will owe in taxes every year without having to worry about what the government plans to take.
This plan gives extreme opportunities to both small and big businesses. Under his plan, businesses would know exactly how much to budget for taxes each year. Capital gains taxes would be eliminated and the “death tax,” a tax on estates and wills, would be eliminated, allowing businesses to hire more people and new businesses to form. With this idea, innovation would begin to rapidly increase as more companies are able to enter the marketplace as a result of cheaper affordability. This plan eliminates the current disastrous tax code and allows the free markets to prevail, a cornerstone to the U.S. and its economy.
It is clear that our country isn’t working, and nothing seems to be changing. Business as usual continues to go on in Washington, D.C. Cain has proven that he can turn a company around in a very short time. He demonstrated that he knows how economies and businesses work, and that it takes a team to get things done. These same principles can be applied when considering that it takes congressional approval to pass bills into law.
Cain might seem like the least likely candidate to be running for the GOP nomination, but he seems to offer more than any of the other candidates, and polls reflect this. In September, he won the Florida Straw Poll, and two weeks ago Cain won both the TeaCon Straw Poll and the National Federation of Republican Women’s Straw Poll with over 77 percent and 48 percent of the votes respectively. Just this past weekend, Cain took a landslide 52.6 percent of the votes at the Republican Straw Poll at the Midwest Leadership Conference in Minnesota. An IBOPE Zogby poll even showed Cain beating out Obama by 2 percent.
Cain’s rise to the top is a clear sign that the American people are unhappy with how things are running, and that politics might not be the answer. Cain believes in real solutions. Somebody like Herman Cain might just be exactly what America needs. Barring any campaign trail gaffs, Cain might just stand a chance at becoming the next president after all.
— Joshua Segall is a management information systems senior. He can be reached at letters@wildcat.arizona.edu.
