In Britain the number you dial for emergency services – “police, fire, ambulance” – is 999. In America there is an economic emergency for which help could come from Herman Cain’s 999 plan: 9% tax on business profits, 9% tax on personal income, 9% national sales tax.

We think Herman Cain is impressively rational (although he is a Baptist) and by far the most likable of the Republican candidates for the presidency. The policies he advocates are firmly conservative. Only on foreign affairs he has been weak, obviously under-informed; but he’s doing what he knows he must about that, starting with a recent visit to Israel.

This is from American Thinker:

Generations of career politicians … have bankrupted our country in a slow side toward socialism and the withering of our liberty.

Patriots are clamoring for an individual who, as president, can calmly and confidently reorient this country to the Constitution and fiscal sanity. We the People must nominate the next Republican nominee, even (especially) if it means making an end run around the party establishment to put forth someone who is not of Washington, nor political moderation. We must eliminate candidates who have had a part — large or small — in contributing to the current crisis. That means no Romney, no Huckabee, no Gingrich, no Palin. The boldest statement that can be made is to elect a private citizen president.

Not for Cain is the dialect of programmed candidates controlled by Republican Party hacks or “up-and-coming political stars.” … Cain does not require handlers and consultants. No political consultant would ever tell a candidate to answer a question, to which he cannot truly give an informed answer, as Cain did on a question of national security, “I don’t know all the facts.” … Cain speaks with total self-confidence born of ability and achievement, not the unearned laurels of sycophants.

Cain speaks blunt truths about how far we have fallen from our charters and the necessity to restore them and revere them again. As he recently [said] when refusing to walk back comments about a ban on Muslims in a Cain administration, he only wants “true patriots” around him, committed and dedicated to the Constitution, the Declaration, and the laws of this country. What else matters?

Cain has proven himself again and again as an executive (which, lest anyone forget, is the office he is seeking), willing to begin at ground level and rising to save a company from bankruptcy. He is a scholar, a mathematician (bachelors from Morehouse), and computer scientist (masters from Purdue) who speaks logically and plainly.

We would like to know what our American readers think of Cain as a prospective president; and whether our foreign readers have taken notice of him, and if so what their impressions are.