Interesting local angle in Daniel Henninger's piece in today's WSJ called Taking Cain Seriously:
In the late 1970s, Mr. Cain was recruited from Coca-Cola in Atlanta, his first job in business, to work for Pillsbury in Minneapolis. His rise was rapid and well-regarded. He joined the company's restaurant and foods group in 1978 as director of business analysis. In the early 1980s, Pillsbury sent him to learn the hamburger business at a Burger King in Hopkins, Minn. Then they assigned him, at age 36, to revive Pillsbury's stumbling, franchise Burger King business in the Philadelphia region. He succeeded. According to a 1987 account in the Minneapolis Star Tribune, Pillsbury's then-president Win Wallin said: "He was an excellent bet. Herman always seemed to have his act together."
Herman Cain probably learned more about the realities of the world during his stint running a Burger King in Hopkins (or Hopkin as Atomizer calls it) than Barack Obama ever did during his days as a community organizer. Henninger's point is that it seems silly to discount Cain's candidacy because of lack of political experience given his extensive business background especially when just that sort of experience is Mitt Romney’s chief selling point. For the last three years, we’ve been lead by a president steeped in politics from an early age with precious little experience in or understanding of business and capitalism. Given what career politicians have wrought for the country of late, instead of seeing Cain’s lack of political experience as a detriment we should rightly view it as an asset.
