Third Person Possessive: Herman Cain Responds to Sexual Harassment Charges (November 8, 2011)

What was the deal?  During the fall of 2011, businessman Herman Cain was one of numerous candidates seeking the Republican nomination for President.  On October 30, a report surfaced that two women who worked for Cain at the National Restaurant Association had complained about Cain's sexually suggestive behavior and had received payments upon leaving the organization.  Cain denied both the harassment allegations and the settlement payments, although he later acknowledged that the organization had reached an “agreement” in which some of the women received money.  On November 2, a third woman accused Cain of harassment.  Five days later, a fourth woman reported allegations against the businessman, and became the first to reveal her name and offer specific details of alleged harassment.  Cain continued to deny all allegations, but pressure mounted on Cain to discuss the situation in more detail.  Cain scheduled a press conference for November 8, seeking to address the charges “head on.”  At the time the scandal broke, Cain was tied with Mitt Romney as front-runners in the Republican presidential primary.  With his candidacy in peril and his reputation in question, Cain chose to deliver an apologia.

What did he say? A video of Cain's briefing, delivered one year ago today, can be found here, and a transcript is included here.  

How did he do?  Well, Cain didn't lack in confidence.  He began his opening statement congratulating himself for his candor:  "I choose to address these accusations directly...because that's the person Herman Cain is."  Are we still doing the third-person reference thing?  Probably just a slip of the tongue.  Anyway, after that bit of bolstering strategy, Cain lays on the denial:  "I have never acted inappropriately with anyone, period....I don't even know who this woman is....The charges and accusations I absolutely reject. They simply didn't happen. They simply did not happen." Well then, that should take care of it, right?  The speech should end right there.  

Not surprisingly, it doesn't.  It seems Cain still has a lot of explaining complaining to do about the media, which had "stalked" his family and encouraged his "anonymous accusers" and his one, um, onymous accuser, a "troubled woman" brought forth by "the Democratic machine."  That's a lot of attack the accuser strategy for one speech.  But, wait, there's another shadowy group which Cain exposes to the harsh light of day:  "Some people don't want to see Herman Cain (okay, I guess it wasn't a slip of the tongue) get the Republican nomination...to keep a businessman out of the White House...their motivation is to stop Herman Cain (oy)."  The candidate comes off sounding a bit scattershot and paranoid here, which undermines the earlier candid denials and directness which had been, at least since the first paragraph of his statement, a Herman Cain hallmark. 

The question-and-answer part of the briefing tries to dig into the details of the accusations made by the woman who went public, or as Cain sensitively describes her, "the one that was, you know, put their face on TV."  He spends a lot of time offering tricky differentiation strategies to explain away his behavior and the payment the woman received after leaving Cain's organization.  First, the payout constituted an employment "agreement" not a "legal settlement."  Second, the offensive behavior involved an innocent gesture rather than sexual harassment.  Cain spins the following yarn of office drama:  "I was standing next to [her], and I gestured, standing near her, like this, 'You're the same height as my wife,' because my wife comes up to my chin. That was the one I remember."  Okay, well, that's not exactly Mad Men and sounds pretty harmless.   And he doesn't remember anything else, so why would anyone think there's more to the story?  Maybe because only three paragraphs earlier, Cain boasts, "I'm pretty good at remembering people."  I think Herman Cain knows that Herman Cain is not demonstrating the Herman Cain directness for which Herman Cain is known.

Final Call?  Sinkhole.  Cain's emphatic denials bought him a bit of time, but his press conference left too many unanswered questions.  Those lingering doubts grew when, three weeks later, another woman, Ginger White, admitted to a 13-year affair with Cain.  His poll numbers dropped into single digits and, on December 3, 2011, Cain suspended his campaign, and Mitt Romney eventually emerged as the GOP nominee.  However, Cain has far from disappeared from the public arena, hosting a popular radio show, touring the lecture circuit, and working as a FOX News commentator.  In fact, only yesterday, Cain called for a new, more conservative, third party in American politics.  It seems unlikely, however, that Cain, with his scandal history, will ever emerge as the nominee of that--or any--political party.