Anyone who runs for national office has baggage including your Saint Cain...
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Cain, Now Running as Outsider, Came to Washington as Lobbyist
an ultimate Washington insider: industry lobbyist.
From 1996, when he left the pizza company, until 1999, Mr. Cain ran the National Restaurant Association, a once-sleepy trade group that he transformed into a lobbying powerhouse. He allied himself closely with cigarette makers fighting restaurant smoking bans, spoke out against lowering blood-alcohol limits as a way to prevent drunken driving, fought an increase in the minimum wage and opposed a patients’ bill of rights — all in keeping with the interests of the industry he represented.
It was a role that gave him an intimate view of the way Washington works, putting him in close proximity to Republican leaders at the time, including Newt Gingrich, now one of his presidential rivals, and John A. Boehner, now speaker of the House. And it helped Mr. Cain lay the groundwork for the next chapter in his life, his entry into electoral politics, beginning with a short-lived bid for the White House in 2000.
Those who knew him then could see his ambitions developing. Rob Meyne, an official at the R. J. Reynolds Tobacco Company, which contributed handsomely to the restaurant group, wrote in a 1999 e-mail to his colleagues that Mr. Cain’s presidential plans were “not totally unexpected.” In the message, part of an online archive of tobacco industry documents (first noticed by the liberal blog Think Progress), a wry and somewhat skeptical Mr. Meyne assessed Mr. Cain’s chances.
An industry rep is not a “Washington” insider.
Lobbyists are beggars, not power brokers.
Its the corrupt power brokers like Newt that are the problem.