I don’t know if the sexual harassment suit against Herman Cain was legitimate, but I do know that his reaction shows he doesn’t know how politics work:
Fearing the message of Herman Cain who is shaking up the political landscape in Washington, Inside the Beltway media have begun to launch unsubstantiated personal attacks on Cain.
Dredging up thinly sourced allegations stemming from Mr. Cain’s tenure as the Chief Executive Officer at the National Restaurant Association in the 1990s, political trade press are now casting aspersions on his character and spreading rumors that never stood up to the facts.
Since Washington establishment critics haven’t had much luck in attacking Mr. Cain’s ideas to fix a bad economy and create jobs, they are trying to attack him in any way they can.
Sadly, we’ve seen this movie played out before – a prominent Conservative targeted by liberals simply because they disagree with his politics.
The media has been digging up dirt on politicians since pretty much political campaigning began and his best response is that he’s been targeted by liberals? Remember he’s known for at least 10 days that this was going to come out (and if he knew how politics work, he should have known this would come out as soon as he announced his candidacy) and he still wasn’t to able to get his story straight:
“Remember this happened 12 years ago and the word ‘settlement’ suggested to me some sort of legal settlement,” he explained. “And later as I thought about it and thought about it I did recall an agreement with the lady who left who made the false accusation. So thats why I said yes, there was an agreement. But when I was initially hit with this when I woke up yesterday morning trying to stay focused on my day, I didn’t recall it right away.”
Cain said that he still hadn’t heard of a second settlement, but that it may have occurred without his knowledge after he left the National Restaurant Association in 1999.
Again, if he knew anything about how the media works, he would know this is the worst possible strategy: it keeps the story going over several days as more information comes out and he’s forced to respond each time. The only thing I can think of is that he’s thinking like a CEO–if a CEO tells people not to talk about something, they don’t.
