Herman Cain for President

The Naked Dollar supports Herman Cain for president.

The others are wanting, and we all know why. But it isn't simply that Cain is the last conservative standing: I really, really like this guy. He's the opposite of Rick Perry. the more you know him, the more highly you think of him. And I have friends who know him personally who tell me he's the real deal.

I think Cain's ideas are spot on, and he articulates them brilliantly. I love the fact he came from nothing and achieved so much, but none of it on the back of racial preferences. He has fantastic private sector experience. He ran the Kansas City Fed. He has a degree in math and a masters in computer science. No dummy.

But more than that, he is the personification of the American Dream, and it's something he believes in to his core. He even won the Horatio Alger Award.

He has never held an elective office. So? You want another career politician? Cain has run things, big companies. This should translate well into running the executive branch, certainly better than some senator who's run a staff of thirty. He understands the economy and that government can't create jobs, only destroy them.

He has no foreign policy experience, that's true. But neither did Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, or Barack Obama. The majority of our presidents have had no foreign policy experience. You trust that you're electing someone with intelligence who will figure it out. I have few doubts about Cain on this score.

Can he win the nomination? Yes. Conservatives have flirted with Bachmann and Perry and are largely dismissing them. Few will get comfortable with Romney. I haven't. That leaves Cain.

But here's the thing. Cain has the highest positive intensity score of any candidate by a wide margin. It's apparently the highest ever measured by Gallup. You can read about it here. His only issue is low name recognition, but the data suggest that as he becomes better known, his support will continue to grow. Just today, Cain pulled even with Romney in a national poll.

Can he beat Obama? Hell, yes. Obama enters the race in a weaker position than almost any incumbent in a century. He is hemorrhaging support from every quarter, and the economy won't recover in time to bail him out (because his own policies are keeping it down). And Cain will eat into the only strong support that Obama still has: the black vote.