So this is an anti-Ronald Reagan ad, right? :evilgrin:
What businesses did Cain "create"? His career has been as an analyst and then managing groups of chain restaurants (and apparently corporate stores, not franchise stores). That'd be fair enough if that was all he was claiming, but this is a guy who came into large, ongoing operations, not someone who "created" these companies.
After completing his master's degree from Purdue, Cain left the Department of the Navy and began working for The Coca-Cola Company in Atlanta as a computer systems analyst. In 1977, he moved to Minneapolis to join Pillsbury,<30> soon becoming director of business analysis<31> in its restaurant and foods group in 1978.
At age 36, Cain was assigned in the 1980s first to analyze and ultimately to take the reins of Burger King, where he managed 400 stores in the Philadelphia area. At the time, Burger King was a Pillsbury subsidiary. Under Cain's leadership his region went, in three years, from the least profitable for Burger King to the most profitable. 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."<32> At Burger King, Cain "established the BEAMER program, which taught our employees, mostly teenagers, how to make our patrons smile" by smiling themselves. It was a success: "Within three months of the program's initiation, the sales trend was moving steadily higher."<33>
His successes at Burger King prompted Pillsbury to appoint him president and CEO of another subsidiary, Godfather's Pizza. Cain arrived on April 1, 1986, and told employees, "I'm Herman Cain and this ain't no April Fool's joke. We are not dead. Our objective is to prove to Pillsbury and everyone else that we will survive."<34> Cain, over a 30-month period, reduced the company from 640 stores to 563<35> . As a result of his efforts, Godfather's Pizza sales were reduced from $275 million in 1986 to $242.5 million in 1988<35>. Godfather's Pizza was performing poorly, and had slipped in ranks of pizza chains from 3rd in 1985 to fifth in 1988 <36>. In a leveraged buyout in 1988, Cain, Executive Vice-President and COO Ronald B. Gartlan and a group of investors, bought Godfather's from Pillsbury. Godfather's sales remained level with Cain as CEO, ending at $265 million for 540 stores in 1996<35>, when he resigned. <37>.
Later in 1996 he moved to Washington, D.C., to become CEO of the National Restaurant Association, a trade group and lobby organization for the restaurant industry, on whose board of directors he had previously been chairman concurrently with his role at Godfather's Pizza.<38>.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herman_Cain
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