>> tonight, the man up close and personal. >> my mom is probably up in heaven going my, my, my. my dad is probably up in heaven going, that's my boy. >> this is "piers morgan tonight." good evening. i'm in las vegas at the sister resort to the venetian. the republican debate last night was pretty lively. and one of the live leanne tag nifts is with me tonight. hr man cane. that was some punch out last night. >> well, let's just say that it gotten ner jet particular and a little bit of fireworks. >> did you worry that rick perry was about to swing one? >> i was getting ready to referee and break them up. i was going, man, have they really gotten into it. but i think that they both came in with the intention of going after each other. they did it the last time. you can just tell that they are stout and say, go after them on this, on this, on this. i don't spend time doing that. you know what i spend time doing? preparing to talk about solutions. and that's why i just leaned back and let the fireworks go back and forth. >> here's what i think about you that is fascinating. you've come not out of know where you've certainly been a surprise in the last month. what people are saying is, who is hr man cane? who is he really away from the slick? because you're good with the talk and you're good with the walk. you know where i'm going. >> the walk and the talk? >> yeah. the gift of the gab, as my grandma would say. but what is the real herman cain like? how would you like people to know the real you? >> the real me starts with a man of faith, a man that believes in family and believes in the future of this country which is one of the reasons why i'm running for president. my faith has been a big part of me all my life. joined the church when i was 10 years old. my parents took us to church. they didn't send us to church. so faith is a big part. but therefore i'm driven by not only goals, objectives, and dreams, but what i feel my calling is supposed to be. i've always done that. whenever i've had to make a very serious decision career-wise, i've always relied upon my faith, along with my wife, in order to make that decision. >> what is your calling right now? why do you feel this burning desire to be president? many people view the most thankless jobs in the world? >> right. my calling is to make a difference. and i have done this all my life. i never dreamed that i would have a calling to make a difference at this level. but it really goes back to 1999 when my first grandchild was born and i looked at her face and the first thought that went through my mind was, what do i do to make this a better nation and a better world? i didn't know the answer then. and it took 12 years for this journey to unfold. a lot of things have happened since then. i ran for the united states senate in 2004, came in impressive second. >> you said "impressive second"? >> impressive second. >> is there ever an impressive second? >> yes, there is an impressive second. >> so you're not really a politician. if you're a footballer, you don't say i came in an impressive second. some would say a disastrous second because you didn't win. >> i came in an impressive second. >> an unimpressive second. >> because i almost pulled it off. i came within 2 percentage points. >> but you won't be happy if you almost become the nominee? >> no. >> america right now can't afford to have a leader. >> yep. >> who thinks that coming second is good enough. >> absolutely. >> he needs a winner. >> and that's why i'm running. i respect all of the candidates. >> who would you respect more than others? >> well, i would say newt gingrich and mitt romney that i would feel comfortable if i did not get it. but i have a lot of confidence in the type of job they would do. >> and who do you have the least respect for? >> let's just stick with the one that i have the most respect for. >> no. come on, herman. >> i don't believe representative ron paul would be a good president. >> why? >> because most of his ideas and positions are eliminate rather than fix. we need to fix a lot of things in this country. i don't believe in throwing the baby out with the bath water. we have more things that we can fix than things that we can do away with. >> michele bachmann, rick perry are the pea party candidates. you would imagine they would be down the political route more than you would. you haven't named them in either category, respected or disrespected. why not? >> because most of my career in addition to running organizations, turning around businesses, i have studied, written a lot, and spoken on the topic of leadership. so after six debates and after listening to them do interviews, i have formulated my opinions about them related to their leadership ability because that's the biggest thing that you need to bring to that job. >> what's your conclusions about rick perry and michele bachmann? >> when i lessen to their answers to questions, most of the time they get off track because they either don't answer the question or are given a mini -- >> it's interesting that you say that. because watching you, if you don't mind me say, get yourself into a little bit of a whole over the whole issue whether you negotiate with terrorists. i watched your review in "the colleague" and you clearly answered in the moment as if you would, you would have released guantanamo bay inmates, al qaeda and otherwise for the american soldier. >> yeah. >> and then later you decided that you wouldn't. and then you made a mistake? >> i misspoke. >> did you misspeak or make a mistake? >> i misspoke. here's why i misspoke. we were talking about the situation in israel. okay. and the point that i was making, was simply, if i was prime minister netanyahu, i'm sure he had a lot of -- >> here's what i want to say. you're a straight talker. the reason people like you, the reason you're gathering momentum, people say to me, herman cain will give you a straight answer. >> yes. >> what worries me, as you get more and more popular, you're starting to think, whoa, i've got a chance here, so you unfortunately have to become a little more political. >> that is a risk but i'm not going to do that. >> let me ask you a straight question. >> yes. >> was benjamin netanyahu right to swap one of his people for over 1,000 palestinians? it's not really a question of, you haven't seen all of the facts or you don't know what he had to study. it's a basic transfer. >> i disagree. >> could you be american president and sit on these hot issues and say, i don't know? >> piers, for me to say whether benjamin netanyahu was right or wrong based only on the open picks of it is not good judgment. that's why i'm comfortable saying i misspoke about the gitmo situation because -- >> ron paul made quite a big point, didn't he? in a way, there's a lot of negotiating that goes on. would you be happy if you ran for president in afghanistan, for military leaders to continue to negotiate and paying taliban leaders if they felt that it was for the greater good of not necessarily winning the war in afghanistan, but winning the battle against terrorism? >> if the commanders on the ground told me that that was a tactic, that they saw with an official, i would approve of it. >> all because of the taliban are terrorists? >> yes, the taliban are terrorists. >> if you negotiate with them in any capacity, aren't you negotiating terror? >> well, some of the people doing these things, there are citizens that they are converting to basically be on our side. it's not always negotiating with a terrorist. it's negotiating with someone who may be sympathetic to the taliban and then they come over on our side and are supportive of what we're doing. it's not a clear black and white situation unless you know more specifics. >> do you think being the president, now you're getting nearer to this and you have to consider the genuine possibility that you might be. other people are looking at you thinking, what kind of leader will he be, ethnically, morally as you get closer and have to start to wrestle with all of these dilemmas? >> no. and it's because of my approach to leadership and my approach to organization. if you surround yourself with the right people and you have a solid organizational structure, which i've always done, and you have what i call guiding principles, every organization that i have headed up, that will help me not to micromanage. you can't micromanage being president of the united states of america. you have to have people that understand your philosophy and who are able to execute some of the strategies and things that you want to do. >> we're talking philosophy. i want to take a short break and come back to you, take you right back to where it all started for you, herman cain, the kind of background that you had i think drives you today. >> yes. 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>> i was taken aback by the reaction. considering the fact that i was answering wolf blitzer's question, why do so many black americans vote democrat? and i made the statement, because a lot of them are brainwashed into not even considering the conservative or republican point of view or a conservative or republican candidate. but the good news is, a lot of black americans are thinking for themselves and they are getting better and to consider but i don't back down from that word. because when you have people who will not even consider an alternative idea or consider someone who might not exactly agree with them ideological, yeah, i call that brainwashing. >> i've had a lot of guests on very recently getting very hot under the collar about the tea party. morgan freeman and others talk black american. i know you don't like the phrase, african-american. i'm going to ask you why in a moment. but black americans leading black americans who say the tea party is racist. and i know that your fairly humorous response is to say, i looked in the mirror and i appear to be a black man, which i get and you're totally how do you deal with that as a black man who is now leading the tea party charge, how do you deal with the element in the tea party that is overly racist? >> let me say that my experience as a man, there is no more a racist element in the tea party than there is in the general population at large. it isn't. it is not -- if that is -- it's not. this is the biggest misperception. i spoke at the biggest tea party event that i ever spoke at april 15th, 2009. i have spoken at hundreds of tea parties. it's not a racist organization. >> what do you say to morgan freeman, to harry belafonte who have been quite vocal about this? >> i say, go to a tea party. i doubt if they have ever been. >> i don't think they want to go. >> i'll go with them and provide some ground cover for them if they think it's a terrorist racist organization. >> let me take you back to your early days. very, very -- you said it wasn't even poverty that came up. it was poor. which is even worst with poverty. >> you did that good. >> did i say it right? >> you did it good. >> so how poor was it? >> well, when your dad was working very, very hard, and we could only get lunch money one day a week to go to grade school, and the other four days our lunch consisted of whatever my mother could scrape together from the dinner the night before, we would have sandwiches with no meat, we might have sandwiches with jelly or -- i mean, that was fine. it was filling. but they couldn't afford to give us a 25-cent coin for lunch money and it was just my brother and i. >> what do you remember about that, the fact that you had so little? >> what i remember about having so little is we appreciated what little we had. we were thrilled when we could buy lunch on fridays with the rest of the kids. it wasn't that it was that big of a deal. friday's lunch was usually a hot dog, apple, and carton of milk but on that one day we could go eat at the cafeteria with the other kids. >> is that why you are so tough on the poor today? do you feel by comparison, most of the people calling themselves poor, have no idea what the kind of poverty that so many millions of americans had to endure that you did? >> i would have to say that is true but i don't want to overgeneralize. there are a lot of people who really stuck in whatever their economic situation is but i also have to believe that there are some people who don't take advantage of some of the opportunities that they could go out there and get. those are the ones that i have the least amount of patience for. >> is modern america, a modern society, is it spoiled? has it been spoiled? >> some of the population has been spoiled. i happen to think that those demonstrated on wall street are spoiled. they are spoiled and manipulated because i happen to believe that there was a coordinated effort to create all of this chaos and all of this distraction to cover for the failed policies of the obama administration. >> i found this fascinating yesterday in the debate. you got the biggest cheer of the night when you directly attacked the occupy wall street protests. i was amazed by that. >> yeah. >> they had a good night at the casino. but a surprising moment, i thought, to see you get a real ovation for that attack and you kind of steered it away from not necessarily the people themselves, go outside the white house, you said. go and protest against barack obama, against his administration. >> right. >> and i was like, come off it. thank you don't -- honestly, i don't believe that you believe that the banking community of america is as blameless as you're pretending them to be. >> i didn't say that. i never said that. >> you were kind of -- talking about manipulation, you were kind of steering everyone to think, it's not these guys, it's these guys. >> no. first of all, i wouldn't defend the banks because i happen to think that the banks are part of the problem. they had to make sure that the business was run. i was not defending the business or wall street. what i was saying is that they have the frustration directed at the wrong place. >> why? i agree with ron paul. this whole subprime mortgage scandal was a bunch of wealthy bankers effectively preying on the most vulnerable americans of society. you are saying to people, i know you lost your home. i know you probably lost your job. i know you've got no money. it's probably mainly your fault. and it is not your fault. it's barack obama's. what about these guys? >> those are not the people that were protesting on wall street. >> some of them are. >> no. >> why? >> i know some of these people. the 14 million who cannot find a job. the underemployed. you know what they are doing? they are still looking for a job and they can't find one. i know people like this, piers. they don't have time to make a social message on wall street. they are looking every day. some of them are my relatives that i have empathy for or feel sorry for because they can't find work. so this is why i'm so passionate when i say, direct your frustration over at the white house because of the failed policies. >> but i bet if i sat down with your family members that you're talking about now and said, how do you feel that nobody in the banking community of america has ever been properly held to account for what they did? they would say it's outrageous? >> well, piers, the problem is multilevel. first of all, i didn't agree with the government bailing out jpmorgan and the big banks on wall streets. i don't believe in too big to fail. secondly, one of the bigger problems that led to this whole thing, are we working on the right problem, was fannie mae and freddie mac. and because fannie mae and freddie mac was corrupt at the core, you know, two of the people that probably should have gone to jail first, barney frank and chris dodd. because their committees had oversight of fannie mae and freddie mac and it's documented that they turned the other way, put it under the rug. they didn't do their job. >> give me a very quick pie. here's a pie. how much is obama's fault, how much is wall street's a fault, how much is the fault of the people themselves? >> i would say that 50% of it is obama's fault, 25% of it is wall street's fault and 25% of it is the individual's fault. >> that's a straight answer, from a politician. >> i'm not a politician. >> thank you for reminding me. i need a break to recover from that honest answer from a near politician. when we come back, i want to talk about your views on the issues. it's going to get personal. our 4 new rich & hearty soups really have people talking... 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