by Herman Cain
It was one of the few times in my life that I felt somewhat nervous. Not because I was going to ask Bill Clinton a tough question and not because I was on a television broadcast. I had been on TV many times in the past. My nervousness stemmed from my respect for the office of the president of the United States. Just before I stood up, and not knowing exactly what I was going to say, I mouthed the words of my favorite prayer, “Not my will, O Lord, but thy will be done.”
In my opening remarks, I said, “At your state of the union speech, you indicated that nine out of ten Americans currently have health care insurance, primarily through their employers. And tonight you indicated that of those people who do not have insurance, eight of ten of them work for someone. And your plan would force employers to pay this insurance for those people that they currently do not cover. I would contend that employers who do not cover employees do not, for one simple reason, and it relates to cost.”
I then said that I had calculated what his program would cost Godfather’s Pizza. I said that I had also spoken with hundreds of other business people about his program’s impact on their operations. “The cost of your program is simply a cost that will cause us to eliminate jobs,” I explained. “In going through my own calculations, the number of jobs that we would have to eliminate to try to absorb this cost is a lot greater than I ever anticipated. Your averages about the impact on smaller business—those are well intended—but all of the averages represent a wide spectrum in terms of the businesses impacted.”
Getting to the gist of the matter, I said, “On behalf of all those business owners who are in a similar situation to mine, my question is, quite simply, if I am forced to do this, what will I tell those people whose jobs I will have to eliminate?”
Our colloquy continued for four minutes, focusing primarily on what, I informed the president, was his faulty math, and ended with Mr. Clinton’s asking me to detail my findings regarding cost in a letter to him. I did so but never received a response from him, just one from the head of the Small Business Administration.
My question and my words, “Mr. President, with all due respect, your calculations are incorrect,” provoked a tremendous nationwide wave of interest and observation—so much so that when I arrived at my office the next morning, the telephones were ringing off the hook and my staff was hard-pressed to load enough paper into the fax machine to collect all the letters and notes people were sending. Ninety-eight percent of the people who called or sent faxes were supportive of my position and my comments to the president.
While the day was hectic and I just couldn’t get off the telephone, there were some amusing moments. One lady kept Jan, my executive assistant, on the phone for twenty minutes, telling her how much she opposed my position on health care and how upset she was that I had disagreed with the president. She was so incensed, in fact, that she told Jan, “I’m never going to go to Domino’s Pizza again!” to which Jan responded, “That’s a very good idea.”
Over the next several months, hundreds of people let me know—either in person or by letter—that my town hall meeting “chat” with President Clinton had inspired them to write or to telephone their congressperson and to believe that because of my initiative, something could be done to stop a government plan that millions of people simply did not believe in.
While I was not the first person who tried to point out to the president and members of his administration how his proposed plan would affect jobs and the economy, my “four minutes of notoriety” would serve as a lightning rod, and would become, in the words of Newt Gingrich, one of my worthy opponents for the Republican Party’s presidential nomination in 2012, “the turning point of the debate.”
Bill Clinton’s—and Hillary’s—health care plan failed, only to be revived in somewhat different form in Massachusetts by Mitt Romney and in the White House by Barack Obama. Neither Hillary Clinton nor Barack Obama had an ounce of common sense when they put their health plans together. The big difference is that the Clinton care bureaucracy was not nearly as bad as Obama’s is. Neither one of them asked the people closest to the problem how do we make sure that the issue of health care insurance for everybody becomes simpler while bringing down the cost.
It seems that when it comes to health care legislation, “seasoned” politicians apparently cannot discern the will of the American people.
My own assessment of what people took away from that town meeting was, first, the impression of a calm and confident businessman who knew what he was talking about without sounding arrogant or disrespectful—that I was neither the stereotypical ruthless big business executive nor the know-it-all elected official from Washington who, regardless of his perceived political savvy and experience, people had come to distrust.
My encounter with Mr. Clinton demonstrated yet again to me that leadership is not an endowed consequence of position-ship, just as singing ability is not an endowed consequence of having a voice. The “stuff” that people see in a leader is not always quantifiable or immediately recognizable. But they know it when they see it—and they know when it is missing.
And now, as I travel the country, I am aware that an increasing number of concerned Americans see this “stuff” in me.
But back then, I wasn’t content to rest on those laurels, so I became a political activist, as well as embarking on several new careers, as an author of four books in eight years—Leadership is Common Sense, in 1997; Speak as a Leader, in 1999; CEO of SELF, in 2001; and They Think you’re Stupid, in 2005 (I’m writing a follow-up to that one)—as a motivational speaker, and as a radio talk-show host.
In Omaha, when I began writing books and giving speeches, I needed a sub chapter S incorporation to separate those activities from my work at Godfather’s. The company I formed was called T.H.E., Inc. I came up with that name when, after giving a keynote speech to a large audience, I overheard two ladies talking: “Wow,” one of them said, “what a speech by Herman Cain!” And the other lady said, “That wasn’t a speech, it was an experience!” And that’s how I came up with T.H.E., for The Hermanator Experience.
I listened to a customer. What a novel idea!
When I moved to Atlanta, I needed to form a Georgia corporation. But I didn’t want to replicate The Hermanator Experience. So, inspired by people coming up to me at conventions and saying, “You have a different way of stating things that’s so clear and compelling,” I decided to call the new corporation “The New Voice.”
The genesis of my involvement with the Federal Reserve stems from my move to Omaha as president of Godfather’s Pizza in 1986. I became involved in the community through the Pilgrim Baptist Church, where Gloria and I worshipped. I was soon approached by a man named Joe Edmondson, a quadriplegic confined to a wheelchair. He was thrilled when he found out that I was the “black guy” running Godfather’s Pizza, and he pestered my assistant until she gave him an appointment to see me. It wasn’t that she resisted doing so; it was simply that there were so many demands on my time.
On the appointed day, Joe and his wife came to my office and he explained that the two of them, operating on a “mom and pop” basis, had put together an organization called the Edmondson Youth Outreach Program. Their idea was to help young, inner-city black kids in North Omaha, where the majority of the city’s black families lived, to get off the streets by engaging in various structured activities—for example, a wrestling program.
Joe, who was a father figure to those kids, asked me to join his board. In my experience with not-for-profits, that was code for: Can you help us raise money? I told him that while I wouldn’t be able to attend many meetings, I would assist with fundraising. When the news got around that I was getting involved in the community, I received many other, similar invitations.
I ended up joining the board of Creighton University, which included many of Omaha’s leading businessmen. I soon received a call from the branch manager of the local Federal Reserve Bank. He was inviting me to lunch, and when we met, he told me about the
Federal Reserve, and I eventually joined the board of the Omaha branch of its Kansas City district.
I thought: Wow, the Federal Reserve wants me to serve on one of its boards! That was something I had never really thought about, but it seemed pretty prestigious, so I joined that board, where I served for two years. Then I was asked to serve on the board of the Kansas City District, eventually becoming its chairman.
The meetings of the Kansas City District would usually last for half a day. When I was its chairman, if there was a specific issue that I needed an in-depth briefing on, I would travel from Omaha to Kansas City the afternoon before the meeting to be briefed by the bank’s full-time president. Once every few months, I would go to Washington to meet with the Federal Reserve’s chairman, Alan Greenspan, and the other governors so they could receive firsthand anecdotal feedback.
Chairman Greenspan was a very amiable, soft-spoken, at times brilliant guy. He would sit patiently and listen to all the reports; hear everybody; and then come to his insightful conclusion about what we needed to do. He was a very effective leader who did not make unilateral decisions.
My service demonstrated to me that we need the Federal Reserve, contrary to what some people, including at least one of my current opponents for the presidential nomination, believe.
I don’t believe we need to end the Federal Reserve system—that would be comparable to advocating that we get rid of air traffic controllers because we have some plane crashes. If you do that, you’re going to have more crashes. We need to fix the Federal Reserve, not end it. That would be a dumb idea!
And to be fair, when I served on the Federal Reserve Board we didn’t have a $14 trillion national debt; in those years we had one that totaled $4 to $5 billion, and sometimes less. Initially, its primary mission involved price stability and control of the money supply. Then in the 1970s, the Federal Reserve was charged with managing unemployment. That never should have been done, because you cannot manage unemployment, price stability, and our currency with one arrow, and they had multiple targets but only one arrow.
There are some people who claim that I’m against auditing the Federal Reserve. In the words of my grandfather, “I does not care.” That’s not one of my lead issues. If somebody wants to audit the Federal Reserve, go ahead and do it. I’m not going to make that a top-priority issue for Herman Cain because we have other, more important issues to be concerned about, like jobs and the economy.
Looking back on my time with the Federal Reserve, it gave me the opportunity to be exposed to macroeconomics, to examine and be part of the really big decisions that affect our national economy. I don’t apologize for the time I spent on the Federal Reserve. I believe that my colleagues and I collectively performed an honorable, admirable job for the people of this country.
Most of the people who today are vociferous critics of the Federal Reserve system don’t know what they are talking about. If you look at its concept purely from a technical, academic standpoint you could conclude that we don’t need it since it didn’t exist before 1913.
Its critics claim that our money supply and the world’s supply will self-regulate. No, they won’t. They will not self-regulate, and you will have chaos. Even though I don’t agree with everything the Fed has done of late, our currency as it stands today is the world’s currency standard. This is why we have to pay down the debt and boost the growth of the economy, so people will stop being nervous about the U.S. dollar.
I wasn’t some crazy radical. I knew how to build a responsible business and I always got along with everybody. That’s how I got to be head of the Kansas City Federal Reserve. It was another example of Herman just being Herman.
As for the National Restaurant Association, or NRA, in 1996, ten years after taking over Godfather’s Pizza, I became its full-time, salaried CEO. There, as at Godfather’s, I was responsible for leadership in vision, strategy, resources, and execution.
I had been a member of the organization’s board since 1988, and had served as its elected volunteer chairman in 1995. It was my accomplishments in that position that led my fellow board members to ask me to take the position of fulltime chairman.
However, the challenges of working with a very large board and fifty state associations made communications and consensus building extremely demanding. Whereas the Godfather’s board had consisted of the two principal owners—Ron and myself—I would now be chairing a board of seventy-five restaurateurs, all of them elected by the association’s general membership. And they encompassed the full range of restaurant categories, including independent and chain operators, as well as operators of full-service, quick-service, and casual dining establishments.
The board members also represented the various priorities of the membership. Full-service operators wanted more National Restaurant Association resources spent on Internal Revenue Service requirements that employers track employees’ tips, whereas quick-service chains with their large number of entry-level workers and high turnover rate were more concerned with minimum-wage legislation. Additionally, even though all of the fifty State Restaurant Associations were independent organizations, I needed to maintain a positive working relationship with them if my goals were to be achieved.
I remained CEO of the National Restaurant Association for two-and-a half years, during which time the organization was significantly strengthened, so much so that Fortune magazine identified it as the fifteenth most influential association in Washington—the first time the NRA had ever cracked the top one hundred.
When I left the National Restaurant Association in 1999, I was recruited to become the CEO of RetailDNA. The restaurant industry was the first target market for its applications and my mission was to lead in the development of business strategy, organization, and top-level marketing.
In 2000, after accomplishing my goals with RetailDNA, I turned my attention full-time to T.H.E., Inc., my keynote-speaking and leadership consulting company.
As for my career in radio, Martha Zoller, an Atlanta area radio talk show host, started me on it when she asked me to substitute for her. It went so well—this was after my Senate race—that people would call me and say: “You really ought to keep your voice out there.”
At the same time, a couple of people who had worked on the campaign suggested likewise, so I asked them to prepare the format for the Herman Cain Show. Then I pitched the idea to the general manager of WGKA, a very small Atlanta-area station.
I outlined my concept in a forty-five-minute presentation, in which I stressed that I planned to deal with major issues. When I finished, the manager said, “Well, you thought about this a bit, didn’t you?” Soon after that, I was offered a two-hour program to be aired on Saturdays from 4:00 to 6:00 P.M.
When I started the broadcast, that time slot didn’t even have a pulse, but after about a year, the station officials began to notice a blip, like a heartbeat! And they said, “Gee, people are listening.”
Then I received a request from WSB to move my show there. As I had no contract with WGKA, I was free to go. There were two considerations that led me to make that decision: First, WSB had an average audience of four hundred thousand listeners while WGKA’s was only eighteen thousand.
Second, although the larger station wasn’t offering me much money, it was more than the nothing I had been receiving from WGKA. So making the move was a no-brainer.
My new program on WSB was aired on Saturday afternoons from four to six. A year after I started there, I received a diagnosis of cancer and took a year off for treatment. When I came back, the station manager, Pete Spriggs, offered me the noon to 2:00 P.M. slot on Saturdays—the weekend’s most-listened-to time-frame.
I would come on the air saying, “If it’s high noon, you must be listening to Herman Cain.” So I was using the phrase “high noon” years before my Centennial Olympic Park presidential announcement.
As the weeks went by, people began to use that phrase. Dave Baker, the broadcaster who had the very successful show before mine,
would close his program by saying, “Stay tuned, here comes that High Noon guy, Herman Cain.” After nine months, I was asked to host a five-nights-a-week, three-hours-a-night show, beginning on January 2, 2008. I told them, “That’s a job and I’m not looking for a job.” Then they made me an offer I couldn’t refuse.
When I asked why I was being given a regular weekday program, I was told my ratings were going up. In addition, I had been one of several people who had subbed for the highly popular personality Neal Boortz, and according to a station survey, I had the highest rating of anyone who had ever substituted for him.
I was given the coveted 7:00 to 10:00 P.M. time slot. In order to do that, WSB moved Michael Savage to the 10:00 P.M. to 1:00 A.M. slot. My ratings were high all the way up to January 2011, when I left the airwaves to pursue my party’s presidential nomination.
I can honestly say that if I hadn’t been on the radio, I wouldn’t have been as familiar with the issues as I am now. Nor would I have thought through common sense solutions for them. There’s an old saying: “If you’re fat, dumb, and happy, you don’t feel like you have to do anything; but if you understand the issues and think you can do something about them, you have an obligation to not just sit there.”
I believe that having that program was God’s way of forcing me to understand the critical issues confronting our nation. As I carefully listened to what my callers were saying I became very frustrated realizing that the country was on the wrong track. At first, the calls expressed concern, but after the Obama administration had been in office for about a year, the calls of concern became expressions of fear for the future of America. I also felt this fear and decided to do what I could to begin to make things right again.
One night a caller, identifying himself as a young man, said, “Mr. Cain, I’m frustrated.”
