Has The Cain Train Run Out of Steam? [Politics]

It’s been a rocky couple days in the smoking death spiral that is the Herman Cain presidential bid. Cain attempted to preempt the latest accuser to fall out of the woodwork, Atlanta native Ginger White, by previewing the accusations during an interview with CNN's Wolf Blitzer. Acknowledging White's allegations of a “casual” 13-year affair that ended mere months before he declared his intention to seek his party’s nomination, he nevertheless vigorously denied that anything untoward had happened. But even as Cain protested consternated innocence, his attorney, Lin Wood, released a statement that included the possibly-too-precise line “this appears to be an accusation of private, alleged consensual conduct between adults - a subject matter which is not a proper subject of inquiry by the media or the public”. If the allegations are lies, the oddly philosophical aside only undercuts Cain's best defense with base-covering hedging. Further, this bold attempt to shift the terms of acceptable inquiry seems improbable in an acrid, partisan climate where both parties frequently use similar and lesser scandals to character assassinate one another out of contention. Regardless of the intellectual merits of Lin Wood’s miniature soliloquy on the ethics of the public/private divide, Cain’s importance to the G.O.P. is not such that the politics of scandal will be rewritten in his honor.

Cain has been characteristically contradictory and clumsy in his response, initially suggesting a need to reassess his campaign, then defiantly denying that any such reassessment would involve a capitulation to his mounting negatives. In an interview given after a foreign policy speech delivered at Hillsdale College, Cain seemed to suggest that he was merely going to have to reconsider tactics, not quit. After further consideration, Cain gave a tongue-knotted interview to Neil Cavuto which included several exit parachutes, a deadline of a week for his final decision, and the tired conservative trope of Big Media martyrdom which Cain wheeled out by suggesting that Democrats orchestrated this scandal while he was just trying to help a single lady through the recession at four in the morning.

Ginger White has baggage of her own, including allegations of text stalking and a libel conviction. And despite the length of the alleged relationship, she has thus far offered only vague evidence in the form of several late night texts and a trip to the 1997 Mike Tyson-Evander Holyfield boxing match. In the post-Bill Clinton era, the public might expect at least a DNA souvenir. Still, this latest revelation has the cumulative effect of indicating a pattern of behavior that would make Cain a difficult sell, especially if evangelical primary voters care to believe what they say. Add to his issues the rebirth of Newt Gingrich, whose resurgence has sucked the media oxygen from other potential “Not Romneys” and it’s not difficult to see the Cain candidacy buckling under the twin pressures of trickling scandals and the cold, crushing realities of poll numbers. Richard Cohen illustrated the brutal facts of Cain’s positioning in a column noting that despite Gingrich’s similar affairs, the G.O.P. no longer needs Cain and his obsolescence makes his exit at this point a foregone formality.