Herman Cain and the high cost of obsession

posted at 1:13 pm on November 4, 2011 by Howard Portnoy
[ Elections ]   

Today is—what?—Day 5 of the Herman Cain sexual impropriety allegation scandal? I don’t know whether Sunday (the day Politico first broke the story) counts, but I know someone who can tell you to the nanosecond when the scandal began: Herman Cain.

Cain and his minions seem more focused on this story—on picking at its “scab,” if you will—than even the mainstream media, which, as Bret Baier claimed yesterday, is more fixated on Cain’s alleged harassment than they were on Bill Clinton’s. Baier noted that Politico has run 72 separate stories on Caingate in its first 3 days in the news cycle compared with 3 or less during the same period in re reports of Bill Clinton’s alleged dalliances with Gennifer Flowers, Kathleen Willey, and Paula Jones.

But so what? If the Cain story had real “legs”—if the insinuations were more specific or more incriminating—the headline for the latest development (word of a fourth accuser) would have almost certainly found space on the front page of today’s New York Times.

Even more significant for the Cain camp is that the candidate’s polling numbers remain strong. They are in fact up, according to a Washington Post-ABC News poll released this morning. Likewise his contributions. The clear message from Cain’s supporters is that they are unfazed by these allegations. The only one who seems clinically obsessed with them is Cain himself.

His campaign manager, Mark Block (that’s the same Mark Block who appears with a cigarette in a puzzling campaign ad that Cain later explained is meant to show “Mark being Mark”—whatever that means), has been making the situation worse. He has been blanketing the airwaves expressing outrage over the leak of this potentially damaging information, but his message has been garbled.

On Wednesday, he appeared on Special Report with Bret Baier, where he openly accused former Cain and current Perry aide Curt Anderson of leaking the story of the allegations. The next day, he appeared with another FOX News Channel host, Megyn Kelly, who played him a clip of Anderson’s protestation of innocence. Here is Block’s response:

All the evidence we had and what’s transpired in the last two weeks led up to Mr. Anderson as being the source. We were absolutely thrilled that he came on your show and said that it [sic] wasn’t because Mr. Cain has always had the utmost respect for him. I’m going to do the same thing that Mr. Anderson has done and move on, talk about issues, and get off of this silliness, as he called it, and on with the campaign.

When Kelly asked if Block was now willing to stand down from his accusation of the Perry campaign, he came back with this head scratcher:

I will stand behind what we said yesterday and was again thrilled that Mr. Anderson said it didn’t come from him. [Emphasis added]

Herman Cain’s appeal resides in his undeniable affability and the freshness of his ideas: His 999 plan has drawn more attention than any other GOP candidate proposal to date. Yet I think it is fair to say that he has succeeded in spite of, not because of, his campaign style. If he allows himself to become bogged down in what is looking increasingly like a distraction, he will only end up hurting himself.

So far, he is failing miserably in his efforts to explain past events and even more so in his efforts at refining earlier explanations. His best bet is to let it go. Contrary to his better instincts, he needs for once to act the politician. He need to rehearse the phrase “No comment.”

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