It’s hard to know what to make of a presidential candidate who speaks of himself in the third person and is introduced at a national press conference by a hardnosed Southern lawyer who gives what sounds like a summation in a murder trial.
It’s hard to know what to make of a presidential candidate whose idea of a political ad is to have a self-indulgent adviser blow cigarette smoke in the public’s face and whose idea of campaigning is to go on a book tour promoting his hot-off-the-press This is Herman Cain! My Journey to the White House (It probably would have been Herman Cain! Profiles in Courage if the back end of the title hadn’t been taken.)
It’s hard to know what to make of a presidential candidate who casts himself as an outsider even though as head of the National Restaurant Association (NRA) he was, in essence, a high-level Washington lobbyist and was later employed in 2005 and 2006 as a traveling shill for Americans for Prosperity – part of the secretive political juggernaut that is funded by the oil-rich Koch brothers, Charles and David.
But then, the Cain Train runs on a different track than any other presidential campaign. And therein lies part of the appeal and a lot of the problem.
The unconventionality of the Herman Cain candidacy and the ultra-self-assured “businessman” behind it have resulted in soaring poll numbers and a public maw hungry for insights into what makes this Republican tick. Last week, this new scrutiny led to revelations of allegations that Cain made sexually suggestive remarks and/or gestures to several women who also worked for the NRA in the late 1990s. (After all the millions the gun lobby spends on promoting itself and its values, to now have NRA associated with a restaurant trade group in the public mind must be driving them crazy over at the National Rifle Association.)
Then on Monday, Sharon Bialek, who once worked for an arm of the National Restaurant Association, came forward to accuse Cain of groping her and trying to induce her to perform a sex act when she went to see him about finding a job 14 years ago.
On the heels of those charges, a spokeswoman for the office of the Inspector General at the Treasury Dept., Karen Kraushaar, identified herself to The New York Times as one of the women who brought sexual harassment charges against Cain when she worked for the NRA.
Cain is no longer the untouchable boss with
underlings who make unpleasantries go away.
One of the things most striking about Cain’s press conference yesterday to defend himself against sexual harassment allegations was this: Despite all his harping on an up-by-the-bootstraps rise to the rarified echelons of Corporate America, Cain is a man in a bubble who doesn’t get that he is no longer the untouchable boss with underlings who make unpleasantries go away.
For too long he was a coddled American CEO and then the coddled head of a powerful trade group and then a coddled and protected supporter of the Kochs. At the Americans for Prosperity summit in Washington last weekend, Cain declared: “I am the Koch brothers’ brother from another mother. Yes! I’m their brother from another mother, and proud of it.” His press conference made you wonder if he is also a brother from another planet.
At first appearing nervous (who wouldn’t be?), Cain gradually composed himself after saying emphatically that he had “never acted inappropriately with anyone, period!” He probably should have stuck to that single message – as any savvy risk management advisor would have counseled -- but then Cain veered into dangerous territory by making the somewhat wild accusation that the “Democrat machine” was behind the sexual harassment allegations because it is desperate “to keep a businessman out of the White House.”
Yet a smart corporate executive aware of the sexual minefields in the workplace these days and steeped in the art of damage control, would never have made ill-advised statements such as: “It’s not just men who sexually harass women. I have seen women sexually harass men.” And perhaps Cain should not have characterized Bialek as “a troubled woman” whose name, face, and voice he couldn’t remember.
The effort by Cain and his campaign to besmirch Bialek’s character and highlight her troubled financial circumstances have been amateurish.
And while there certainly are damage-control experts who might advise a full frontal assault on the accuser, the effort by Cain and his campaign to besmirch Bialek’s character and highlight her troubled financial circumstances have been amateurish. As Politico is reporting today, “records of all the legal filings referenced by the Cain campaign – and a few more not referenced … appear to be liens placed on her for unpaid bills or rent, and all are for relatively small sums in the four-digits.”
Bialek’s story is that in 1997, after being fired from her job as manager of industry relations for the Educational Foundation of the National Restaurant Association, she traveled to Washington to meet with Cain, then president of the NRA, and seek his help in finding employment. When she got to her hotel, she found her room was a palatial suite because, as she alleges Cain later said, he “upgraded” her. After drinks and dinner, they were in a car when, she alleges, Cain put his hand up her skirt and tried to push her head toward his crotch, saying: “You want a job, right?”
Cain says the incident never happened, but whether it did or didn’t could certainly be cleared up by hotel records – if they still exist. Or perhaps he could bring forth his daybook from the restaurant association – if that’s still available -- to demonstrate where he was and what he was doing on the day and evening in question.
Curiously for a woman who claims she is seeking nothing but the truth and an apology from Cain, Bialek engaged the services – or at least was accompanied by – legal she-wolf Gloria Allred and held a very un-monastic press conference at the Friars Club in Manhattan (in the Milton Berle Room, no less). Given her financial travails, Bialek’s motives remain suspect.
But it is not Bialek the Cain campaign should fear. It is the Treasury spokeswoman Kraushaar. “I am interested in a joint press conference for all the women where we would all be together with our attorneys and all of these allegations could be reviewed as a collective body of evidence,” Kraushaar told The Washington Post. Kraushaar, a former journalist who is married to a Republican lobbyist, only came forward, the Post says, after her identity was revealed by The Daily.
At his press conference, Cain called Kraushaar’s allegations “baseless” and went corporate in parsing the difference between a “settlement” and a company “severance agreement,” which Kraushaar is said to have received.
Clearly Cain can talk the corporate talk when he wants to and he remained gentlemanly throughout his press conference, at one point requesting similar behavior from the press, saying: “I ask that the media not drag my family into this.”
The bottom line is that maybe it would be refreshing to have a businessman in the White House. Now it’s up to Cain to prove he’s not a funny-business man.
