As Herman Cain, the suddenly-embattled Republican presidential candidate, takes to the airwaves on Tuesday to address — and vigorously deny — the latest round of sexual misconduct accusations against him, the battle lines between left and right only continue to harden. In fact, the back-and-forth over Cain has gotten so heated, even this pundit has had enough.Maureen Dowd wrote a column in the New York Times called “Cain Not Able,” declaring his candidacy over for the way it has handled the allegations. Meanwhile, on the other side, Rush Limbaugh and Ann Coulter have leapt to his defense. Coulter invoked Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, calling the investigation of Cain a “high tech lynching” and “an outrageous attack on a black conservative who is doing extremely well.”
Plenty of others have likewise piled on his accusers, calling them money-grubbers and self-promoters. Meanwhile, plenty of others have declared him guilty, all without fact or knowledge of what actually occurred.
The truth is, we don’t know the truth of what happened 14 years ago, when Cain was the head of the National Restaurant Association. We may never know, either, and may just have to live with this gray area in Cain’s past. Better to judge him on his policy, I think, than on his murky sexual history.
I’m not without guilt when it comes to passing judgment. Watching the Cain campaign dodge and weave, I will admit to letting a few comments slip. But pundits like me won’t decide who becomes President. I only hope voters aren’t as quick as the media have been to make up their minds about Cain.
Of course, the unearthed sexual harassment charges quickly devolved into an unhelpful media circus — one in which Cain himself all too willingly played the role of ringmaster.
There he was on Monday night, issuing a blanket denial of sexual harassment on “Jimmy Kimmel Live,” joking with Jimmy while telling the audience that former National Restaurant Association employee Sharon Bialek’s story — the most public to come to date so far — is “totally fabricated.”
If that weren’t enough, his campaign also sent out a scathing critique of Bialek’s “long and troubled history” of legal and financial problems in an email to supporters on Tuesday morning.
The email documents numerous lawsuits she’s been involved in, saying they “may help explain why she has come forward 14 years after an alleged incident with Mr. Cain, powered by celebrity attorney and long term Democrat donor Gloria Allred.”
Then there was the recent story in the Chicago Tribune, unearthing every detail about her life, from her previous boyfriends to her finances. That would make anyone in a similar position hesitant. Besides, who’s to say that Bialek — who is, according to the Tribune, a registered Republican — doesn’t feel compelled to speak out now because of a love of country?
Not to mention that scurrilous reports of men behaving badly always have a way of creeping up at just the right moments. John McCain, while running for President in 2008, was the victim of shoddy reporting and an inarguable media bias when the New York Times and the Washington Post both baselessly reported that he’d had an affair with a lobbyist. Nor is that just a male affliction — South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley also had to defend herself against allegations that she’d had an affair with a male campaign staffer.
And it took, of all outlets, the National Enquirer to finally bring to light the sordid details of former presidential candidate John Edwards’ affair and love child after the mainstream media appeared willing to cover up the inconvenient story for months. So are we really going to count on a Politico piece, with unnamed sources and thin details, to introduce us to Cain’s alleged past wrongs — a story published, oddly enough, just as he was gaining strength in a contentious primary?
I doubt we will ever know what happened between Cain and Bialek — or between him and any of his other accusers. In an ABC interview on Tuesday afternoon, he charged his accuser of flat-out lying. That’s not a story from which he is likely to stray — deny, deny and then deny again.
But that might have to suffice, considering that no criminal charges have been filed and the accusations themselves are more than a decade old. What will Cain do about Iran? How does he plan to get America back to work? Those are the issues we should be talking about. Of course, we can’t do that while the circus is in session.
secupp@redsecupp.com source
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