by Herman Cain
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Copyright © 2011 by Herman Cain
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First Threshold Editions hardcover edition October 2011
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Manufactured in the United States of America
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Cain, Herman.
This is Herman Cain! : my journey to the White House / Herman Cain.
p. cm.
1. Cain, Herman. 2. Cain, Herman—Political and social views. 3. Presidential candidates—United States—Biography. 4. Businessmen—United States—Biography. 5. Presidents—United States—Election—2012.
I. Title.
E901.1.C35A3 2011
324.973—dc23
[B] 2011033425
ISBN 978-1-4516-6613–7
ISBN 978-1-4516-6615-1 (ebook)
This book is dedicated to my mother and father,
Lenora and Luther;
to my wife, Gloria;
to my children, Melanie and Vincent;
and to my grandchildren, Celena, Preston, and Ryan.
ON MY JOURNEY NOW
On my journey now (Mount Zion),
On my journey now (Mount Zion),
Well I wouldn’t take nothing (Mount Zion),
For my journey now (M-o-u-n-t Zion)
One day one day (Mount Zion),
I was walking along (Mount Zion),
And the elements opened (Mount Zion),
And love came down (M-o-u-n-t Zion)
You can talk about me (Mount Zion),
Just as much as you please (Mount Zion),
But I’ll talk about you (Mount Zion)
When I get on my knees (M-o-u-n-t Zion)
—Traditional Negro Spiritual,
as sung by the Morehouse College Glee Club (1963–67)
CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION: I’m Running for President
Chapter 1: Growing Up Poor in the Segregated South
Chapter 2: Ceo of Self
Chapter 3: Gloria
Chapter 4: Mathematics to Pepperoni
Chapter 5: The Godfather’s Years: From CEO to Entrepreneur
Chapter 6: New Challenges and Achievements
Chapter 7: Beating Stage Four Cancer
Chapter 8: The Call to Serve
Chapter 9: “Forty-five”—A Special Number
Chapter 10: The Cain Doctrine
Chapter 11: Post–High Noon at Centennial Olympic Park
Chapter 12: The Cain Administration: the First Ninety Days
APPENDIX A: The Major Issues of the Day, According to President Herman Cain
APPENDIX B: My Leadership History
APPENDIX C: My Awards and Honors
APPENDIX D: CPAC 2010 Speech
APPENDIX E: May 21, 2011, Speech
THIS IS HERMAN CAIN!
INTRODUCTION
I’m Running for President
They that trust in the LORD shall be as Mount Zion, which cannot be moved but abideth forever.
—Psalm 125:1
My name is Herman Cain.
I didn’t grow up wanting to be president of the United States. I grew up po’, which is even worse than being poor.
My American dream entailed working hard and making $20,000 a year, but I surpassed that goal and became a corporate CEO, a regional chairman of the Federal Reserve, a president of the Restaurant Association, an author, and an Atlanta talk show host before retiring at sixty-five on cruise control. And then I became a presidential aspirant.
But a strange thing happened on my way to cruise control: The country got off-track. On the evening of January 22, 1999, as I held my first grandchild, Celena, in my arms only moments after her birth, I realized that I needed to turn off the cruise control and help make this nation a better place. I needed to help make it a place in which Celena and the generations to come after her would be able to realize their full human potential and fulfill their own American dreams.
So at 12:46 P.M. on Saturday, May 21, 2011, I walked onto a platform at Centennial Olympic Park, in my hometown, Atlanta, Georgia, wearing one of my favorite gold ties—gold is my power color—and waved to the crowd of fifteen thousand and told them what they had been waiting to hear (for over two hours in more than ninety-degree heat): “I’m running for president of the United States and I’m not running for second!”
Looking out into the crowd and spotting my eighty-one-year-old aunt, Bessie Randall, one of my mother’s sisters, I told the crowd, “She hasn’t decided if she can vote for me yet, but I’m going to change her mind, just like I’m going to change the minds of other Americans.”
Twenty-five minutes later, having articulated my “Cain Doctrine” to the cheering, banner-waving crowd, without printed speech or teleprompter, because I don’t do teleprompters—I like to say I’m a leader, not a reader—I recalled the words of the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and declared that when all the votes are counted on Tuesday, November 6, 2012, “We will be free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty! This nation will be free at last—again!”
Then I got off that platform and went back to the green room, where I joined Gloria, my wife of nearly forty-three years; our children, Melanie and Vincent; and our three grandkids (and we have another on the way). And there, of course, was Aunt Bessie. Strolling over to where she was, I couldn’t resist asking, “Well, Aunt Bessie, now are you going to vote for me?”
“I guess I’m going to,” she said, as if resigned to her fate.
It had been a mere sixteen days since I had redefined campaign history during the first debate of candidates for the Republican Party’s 2012 presidential nomination, at the Peace Center, in Greenville, South Carolina, on the evening of Thursday, May 5, 2011.
Just before I went out on that stage that night, Mark Block, my campaign’s chief operating officer, gave me some of the best, most calming, advice I have ever gotten: He said, “Herman, you don’t have to be perfect out there. Just be Herman Cain.”
His words gave me a deeper level of confidence and I said to the audience, “I’m proud that I haven’t held public office before! How does that work for you?”
It did.
Then, when asked to make my concluding statement, I declared: “We need leadership, not more position-ship. God bless America!”
When I walked off that stage, I didn’t even consider if I had distinguished myself. I just thought: I didn’t make any major mistakes. I just answered the questions as well as I could.
I went into the green room and looked up at the television monitor. There was pollster Frank Luntz, asking a focus group gleaned from the auditorium audience how many people had supported me before the debate. Only on
e person raised her hand. I thought: I guess this is not going to work. But then, Frank asked how many people supported me now, and suddenly I saw all these hands go up. And then I heard Frank say, “Just stop right there!” Those words are going to be ringing in my ears for the rest of my life.
I was as surprised as everybody else. That debate was the game changer and my candidacy took off like a rocket. We knew that my name identification and my inclusion in the polls was going to take some time, so we developed a from-the-ground-up strategy of getting out to know the people.
But what, everyone wondered, made the audience respond the way it did?
Maybe it’s that I’ve always been a no-nonsense person. Maybe my straight-from-the-heart approach struck a resonant chord. But those participants in Frank Luntz’s focus group voted me the debate’s winner, as did 49 percent of viewers on the Fox News Channel. The closest runner-up was Ron Paul—and he only had 25 percent of the vote!
So how did I, the debate participant who mounted the platform as a relative political unknown, manage to capture the hearts and minds of thousands of American voters—and manage to do it in ninety minutes?
How did I, a proud “outsider,” go on to outdistance four better-known presidential aspirants—Tim Pawlenty, Gary Johnson, Ron Paul, and Rick Santorum—in a Gallup Poll conducted between May 20 and 24, 2011?
And how did I manage to place just behind front runners Mitt Romney and Sarah Palin in a Quinnipiac University Poll released on June 8?
This is Herman Cain.
The second debate took place from eight to ten o’ clock on the evening of Monday, June 13, at the Sullivan Arena on the campus of Saint Anselm College, in Manchester, New Hampshire. It was jointly sponsored by the New Hampshire Union Leader, local television station WMUR, and CNN, and broadcast by that cable channel.
Now, I had done political debates when I ran for the U.S. Senate in 2004, against two Georgia congressmen. Those debates were no contest, but this was a presidential debate, and people’s expectations were different.
So while I was a little nervous in New Hampshire, I was confident that I could hold my own because I was getting comments from people, like on the afternoon before the debate, when we stopped in at Sal’s Pizza Place for an informal visit.
People came up to me and said, “You know what I like most about what you said in that last debate? When you said you don’t have all the information—that you didn’t pretend you have a plan for Afghanistan.”
Comments like that confirmed what Mark Block had told me before I walked out onto that platform in South Carolina: “Just be Herman Cain.” That was the same feeling I had as I strolled out onto the platform at Saint Anselm College.
Did I study for that debate? Yes. Did I do “debate prep” with my staff? Yes. Those guys put me through it from two to four on the Friday afternoon before the debate—we just talked about issues and content. The next morning, we did about four more hours. Then we had lunch and just kept on talking about the topics, so, actually, I had about seven hours with my debate team. And they were intense.
Did I study a lot of material? Yes, of course I did; I had a complete transcript of the 2007 CNN debate, moderated by Wolf Blitzer, and I read the whole thing to get a feel for how they do debates. But you can overdo the prep and leave the fight in the gym.
So I had a decent night’s sleep and left early Sunday morning for New Hampshire with my key staff. We did two events that afternoon: First I spoke at a Republican-sponsored picnic, which was fun, although some of the attendees were still trying to define their support, and then our drop-in at Sal’s. I really enjoyed that one because it wasn’t a Republican event: The people there were already supporters and they were there for Herman Cain. I didn’t toss any pizza dough there, but it was great fun just interacting with the people. What encouraged me was that people who have never been politically minded are now getting involved—because they believe in us. You had people from Maine and Massachusetts there—a lady and her daughter drove 120 miles for twenty minutes of time with me. That kind of stuff tells you that something out of the ordinary is going on.
The political establishment doesn’t get it and I’m fine with that. To be honest with you, I hope that they continue to not get it. But you can be sure they’ll get it in January 2013 when I’m taking the oath of office as president!
On Monday, debate day, I was feeling confident. I began the morning by driving over to the arena with my key staff members for a “walk-through.” Along the way, I relaxed by vocalizing and sang one of my favorite hymns, “To God Be the Glory.” I’ve enjoyed singing for pleasure all my life, in my church’s youth choir and as an adult performing once with the Omaha Symphony Orchestra—that one was hard, but I practiced and practiced and pulled it off. That morning, when I followed up the hymn with the national anthem, one of the riders in the car said, “You could sing the ‘Star Spangled Banner’ at your own inauguration!”
Then somebody suggested that I sing it at the debate! I said, “If I did, Mark Block would have a heart attack.”
“No,” Mark said, “you’d get a standing ovation!”
“Well, if I did sing ‘The Star Spangled Banner’ at the debate,” I answered, “at least no one would interrupt me!” And I thought: I might do that at a future debate, just to give the other candidates a fighting chance tonight. As my dad used to say, “Don’t show out too early.”
After the walk-through, I did one media event, a radio interview with an Atlanta-based talk radio colleague, Neal Boortz. I don’t mind being on the radio with him because I feel close to him. And besides, I had all afternoon to rest, and, in fact, after enjoying lunch with my staff, I went back to our hotel for some “down time.”
That evening, I was the first of the seven debate participants to walk onto the platform, the order having been determined by lottery. As I took my place at the far end of that platform, I made a mental vow: I’m going to be myself. Remember, I don’t do canned responses. I believe people can smell them a mile away. I’m spontaneous. I’m who I am.
For the next two hours, during the rare moments when the moderator, John King, gave me the opportunity to weigh in, I spoke of my concerns about our nation’s economic crisis.
The audience and viewers did not get the chance to learn very much about how I plan to get America’s economy back on the right track, but they did find out one important thing about the former CEO of Godfather’s Pizza. During a lighter moment Mr. King asked whether I prefer deep dish to thin crust pizza, and I announced, in no uncertain terms, “Deep dish!”
I had walked onto that platform as the only one of the contenders for the Republican Party’s 2012 presidential nomination to have run several companies; to have rescued one of them from the very brink of bankruptcy; and the only one to have during my career provided jobs for thousands of Americans seeking dignity and fulfillment of their American dreams.
That night, I slept like two rocks at the bottom of a pond.
Two days later, when I picked up my copy of USA Today, I read twenty-eight of the sweetest words written about me in the aftermath of my CNN appearance: “Cain, former CEO of Godfather’s Pizza, topped the list of GOP hopefuls being searched through Yahoo during the debate and its immediate aftermath, according to the company’s statistics.”
That is Herman Cain.
So what is it about me that prompted one out of every four people searching Yahoo’s site to click on the name Herman Cain in those four hours between eight o’clock and midnight on the evening of the New Hampshire debate?
What is it in my DNA that years ago prompted me to take on the enormous challenge of doing my part toward making America a better place for Celena and the generations to come?
Why do I, a son of the segregated South, refuse to think of myself as a “victim” of racism?
What is it that motivates me to insist on defining my identity in terms of “ABC”—as being American first, black second, and conservative third—as I did to cheers
from the crowd in Atlanta on May 21?
Just who is Herman Cain?
And how did I get this way?
Just a hint: It may have something to do with lessons learned from my parents, Lenora and Luther Cain, Jr.
Welcome to This Is Herman Cain!
1
Growing up Poor in the segregated south
We are troubled on every side, yet not distressed;
We are perplexed, but not in despair;
persecuted, but not forsaken;
cast down, but not destroyed …
—2 Corinthians 4:8–9
One day in 1943, Dad, who was eighteen years old at the time, walked off my grandparents’ farm in rural Arlington, Tennessee, with only the clothes he was wearing. But, in fact, he was blessed with more valuable possessions—his faith in God, his self-confidence, and his belief in the American dream.
He walked and hitchhiked all the way to Mansfield, Ohio—I never knew why he went there—and found work in a tire-manufacturing plant. He was determined to earn enough money to build a better life than his father had been able to do, having struggled constantly merely to earn enough to provide the barest of essentials for my grandmother and their twelve children, all of them crammed into a three-room house.
At around that time, Mom, born Lenora Davis, also eighteen and also, like my dad, seeking a better life, walked off her parents’ farm in Douglasville, Georgia, about thirty minutes’ drive west of Atlanta, and made her way to Ohio, where she went to stay with an aunt living in Mansfield.
One of Mom’s cousins found her a job as a maid. In order to get to her workplace, Mom had to ride with her cousin. They in turn would be picked up by her cousin’s boyfriend, in his truck, on his way to work. The truck had one of those cabs where you could only sit three people in the front. One morning, when the cousin’s boyfriend showed up, another guy was already sitting in the cab. As there was only room for three people to sit there, Mom had a choice: either sit in Luther Cain’s lap or not go to work. She needed to go to work, so she sat in Luther Cain’s lap. He was thrilled. After all, Lenora Davis was a good-looking young woman. They did this for several weeks. They started dating. About a year later, he popped the question.
