What was it that the prophet Jeremiah said about his mission, or was said about it in the bible?  Jeremiah was sent among his people to confront falsehoods; he came to challenge the corrupt powers-that-be.  Jeremiah came first to "root up, and to pull down" before building and planting.

So might be Herman Cain's role among the nation's African-American communities, should he secure the GOP presidential nomination and win the presidency.  President Herman Cain could prove to be a terrifically creative destructive force among the nation's 38 million African-Americans.

A Cain presidency would be an incalculable danger to the interests of a fraud-ridden black and white power structure that has long promoted falsehoods -- falsehoods that have kept too many African-Americans in generational poverty, relegating them to drug-infested, crime-ridden inner-city neighborhoods and public schools that are no better than human warehouses -- if that. 

Not that Cain is thinking of himself in such a highfalutin way, as a Jeremiah.  Cain the businessman probably thinks in more conventional terms.  Cain would say he's applying for the job of president -- that he seeks to serve all the people and desires to make the nation better for everyone.  But it's not so much the aim of a Cain presidency as it is the consequence of his presidency that would matter -- and matter profoundly.         

Cain, a conservative Africa-American president, would be the immediate successor and antithesis of the first Africa-American to occupy the White House.  Barack Obama is a thoroughly modern statist whose Democratic Party gains politically -- and handsomely -- from the perpetuation of African-American penury and reliance on Uncle Sam.

For all Mr. Obama's yammering about "hope and change," nothing much has changed for millions of African-Americans -- you know, all those underclass blacks in Detroit, East St. Louis, Newark, Camden, Cleveland, and Philadelphia.  Check that.  What has changed is that Mr. Obama has sought to make his fellow African-Americans more, not less, dependent on government -- therefore less, not more, free.  The president has sought to take the black model of government dependence and make it the standard for the rest of the country. 

Mr. Obama is, of course, ideally positioned to make an historic challenge to so-called civil rights leaders and black, mostly urban, politicians who keep African-Americans down.  Yet Mr. Obama hasn't been even a scold.  Instead, Mr. Obama has acted like any white Chicago Democrat ward-heeler, currying favors by spreading government largesse -- by helping corrupt black leaders and white enablers further entrench their positions through the doling out of taxpayer dollars and more government.

A Cain presidency would be a cosmic irony -- a towering affront, an epic challenge -- to African-American leaders and white progressives who profit from the bondage of African-Americans -- bondage in the form of welfare dependency, and bondage in a subculture that advances resentment, victimhood, and retribution. 

President Cain would never have to declare a challenge to the nation's race industry, to its black and white leaders and stakeholders.  Cain's very public being is already a challenge, hence African-Americans who oppose Cain deride him as an "Uncle Tom" or an "Oreo."  (To Cain's credit, he struck back at his critics by saying that he left the "Democrat plantation a long time ago.")  A Cain presidency would only skyrocket his unintended challenge to his African-American opponents and their white allies. 

If Cain wins the presidency, what's at stake for the race industry is more than abstractions; there are careers, livelihoods, status, power, and influence on the line.  For Democrats, there's power and survival at stake.  For progressives, there's the potential loss of a ready-made constituency for their grievance politics.  Start bleeding off black votes, and Democrats have a significant problem cobbling together majorities in states they've taken for granted (like Pennsylvania) or in competitive states (like Ohio).  Herman Cain in the White House would directly threaten the entire structure that gives good lives to the black ruling class and liberal whites at the cost of stymied lives for disadvantaged blacks.

Herman Cain, America's 45^th president, won't achieve the presidency in a way accepting and comfortable to the coalition of black and white elitists who dominate black America.  No coming up through some acronym race group; no paying dues by climbing the ladder in a big-city Democrat machine; no stamp of approval by white progressives after being tutored in the right circles at Ivy League colleges. 

Herman Cain the man is a threat, but so is his story.  Here's a black man whose family started poor; whose parents were industrious and independent-minded; whose mother and father worked themselves up to modest but proud stations; whose children were raised in an intact family; who sought practical college degrees and who achieved pinnacle success in the business world.  And Cain, though raised in the segregated South, harbors no ill will, nor does he seek continuous retribution and payment for the abomination of Jim Crow and, before it, slavery.

How could millions of disadvantaged African-Americans see the success of President Herman Cain and not wonder?  If words are more powerful than swords, then examples are most powerful of all.  President Cain would embody an ideal largely realized.  President Cain would offer a compelling alternative to the notion that blacks are victims in need of protection by a black ruling class and paternalistic whites.

Herman Cain demonstrates now -- and would all the more as president -- that self-worth and self-respect derive from hard work, discipline, and sacrifice, not from bogus -- or, at least, inflated -- racial pride and a sense of entitlement.  Success isn't the product of excuses and blaming others.  Victimhood is a one-way ticket to loser-hood; it's self-limiting and self-defeating.  Herman Cain's life is an eloquent rejection of victimhood -- the victimhood that permits underclass blacks to be exploited by their supposed protectors.

And President Cain's conservative policies -- free-market oriented, empowering the individual -- would only serve to underscore who the man is and how he arrived at his success. 

Cain as president would shake, and then, over time, tumble the walls that have kept underclass blacks captive for decades, the prisoners of elites' venal self-interests cloaked as compassion.  Once those imprisoning walls start falling, then let there be talk of hope and change. 

As Abraham Lincoln said in his Second Inaugural Address, "The Almighty has His own purposes."  We don't know if Herman Cain will be president.  We can speculate, though.  A Cain presidency wouldn't be kinder and gentler.  By consequence, President Cain would be a change-agent, a Jeremiah, come to "uproot, and to pull down" as the first critical steps in liberating African-Americans from a long bondage.