This post was written by Hatchet reporter Gabriel Felder.

Newspaper columnist and businessman Herman Cain said he can’t wait to take on President Barack Obama in a 2012 presidential bid, while speaking at a College Republicans event in the Elliott School Thursday evening.

Cain began a presidential exploratory committee last month, and is the only Republican to formally announce intentions to compete for the 2012 GOP nod.

At the event Thursday night, Cain said his inspiration to run for the Republican ticket came from his grandchildren.

“When you have grandchildren, you focus on the future of the world,” Cain said. “It’s all about making this world a little better for the next generation and the next generation after that… that’s why I am considering running for the President of the United States.”

When asked what would set him apart from other conservative opponents, Cain stressed his success as a business executive for Pillsbury, Burger King and Godfather’s Pizza, an Italian restaurant chain in Omaha, Neb. that Cain saved from bankruptcy in the 1980s.

He cited his problem-solving experience, fiscal responsibility and his ability to connect with people as factors that would make him a good president.

The United States, Cain said, is “under attack from too many liberal policies.”

Cain is the third Republican the CRs have brought to campus who has either expressed intentions to run for the GOP nomination, or is rumored to have 2012 aspirations.

Former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty spoke to the CRs last month, and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich debated former Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean in Lisner.