Herman Cain made his announcement today that he is stepping away from his race for the Republican nomination to be the US President.
First, we have no way of knowing for sure if the many allegations against him were true. Nothing was ever proven definitively, but of course where there’s smoke, there’s often fire. How often do you pay someone $45,000 to keep quiet about something that they didn’t do? If that happens often, let me know and I’ll sure start accusing anyone that will pay me $45,000 to keep quiet. There’s also the more recent allegation of a thirteen-year on-again/off-again relationship with Ginger White. This is another allegation that Cain denied but does admit to giving her money and other gifts for years.
Let me ask you this, if your spouse is giving money and gifts to an opposite gender “friend” for years, would that ever arouse suspicion in your mind? I think somewhere around the very first time it happened I’d be asking a bunch of questions. But for it to go on for almost fourteen years? Cain’s wife was unaware of this friend being so needy financially? If Ginger White is such a close friend that she merits financial help from Herman Cain, then wouldn’t she be a close enough friend for Gloria Cain to be aware of her?
Unless Herman Cain ever decides to come out and admit that any of the accusations were true, we’ll never really know for sure.
But if any of these accusations were true, why wasn’t Cain vetted better? Either he lied to people during the vetting process or he told them the truth and they thought he could get through it without this information coming up. If the latter is the kind of advice he received, then he had some really bad advisors. You can’t have sexual harassment payoffs in your history or have a mistress on the side for thirteen years and it not come up at some point during the campaign. Even worse, if it does come up, you can’t lie your way through it. If even the sitting President of the United States can’t lie his way through a scandal (“I did not have sexual relations with that woman”) then how can they figure that a candidate will be able to do so. Or, did they never expect that he’d be a front-runner for the nomination? Whichever it is, the whole situation seems pretty poorly planned out and/or advised.
On the other hand, what if not a single one of these accusations are true? What if they are complete fabrications and Herman Cain is completely telling the truth? Then it’s really unfortunate that it is so easy to destroy a good candidate’s campaign. Just find someone willing to do whatever it takes to destroy a candidate. We’ve seen something similar right here in Rhode Island.
Remember the state legislator Doug Gablinske? He had lies spread about him by then NEARI deputy executive director John Leidecker which may have cost Gablinske an election. In this case, the person spreading the lies was even convicted but sentenced to a mere $100 fine. For that very small amount, NEARI was successful in removing Gablinske from office.
Whether Herman Cain is guilty of any of the accusations against him, we may never know. But one thing we do know for sure is that politics is a dirty, dirty game.