It has been a wild ride ever since Herman Cain walked out of the door at the CBS Studios in Washington, D.C. on Sunday morning after doing Face the Nation and encountered a reporter from Politico who asked if Cain had ever been accused of sexual harassment.
Since then, the Georgia businessman’s ability – or lack thereof some would argue - to manage a difficult story has been on display, as Cain and his staff have given out multiple stories, attacked the press for reporting the matter and is now casting blame on one of his fellow GOP competitors.
All the while, the story continues to grow with reports of another woman who claims she was harassed by Cain in the late 1990’s and a man – with current ties to Rick Perry – who claims to have seen moments of unacceptable behavior back when Cain ran the National Restaurant Association.
"I told my wife about this in 1999 and I’ve got nothing to hide,” Cain told Forbes Magazine in an interview on Wednesday as he pointed the finger of blame at the Perry camp over who leaked the sex harassment story.
From the beginning, it seemed logical to many in Washington, D.C. that the leak would have come from the GOP side, but a lot of regular Cain supporters think otherwise, believing this to be more of a liberal media “hit” or an effort by Democrats to snuff out Cain’s momentum.
Cain evidently believes his former campaign chief from the Georgia businessman’s run for Senate in 2004 – who now works for Perry – was the source, a charge that Curt Anderson has denied.
The soap opera saga heavily weighed on Cain’s trip to Capitol Hill on Wednesday, as reporters chased Cain through the halls of a House office building, but couldn’t get the candidate to take the bait.
Earlier in the day, Cain had lost his patience with reporters who kept pestering him about the story during a visit to a Virginia medical clinic; he did not repeat that on Capitol Hill as he simply ignored questions put to him.
“The voice of the people in this upcoming election is going to be more powerful than the voice of the media,” said Cain in a meeting with GOP lawmakers on health care.
“Message is more powerful than money,” Cain added, referring to his lower budget bid for the White House, which has rocketed up in the polls.
Within Republican circles, there is no agreement on whether all of this is causing irreparable harm to Cain’s campaign.
But what is clear is that Cain’s week in Washington, D.C. has lurched out of control of Team Cain.
As I sat to Herman’s right, wedged into the corner of the room, I was struck by how it was a classic Washington political scene – the candidate trying to stay on message, with the reporters all waiting to pounce.
And no one is quite sure how it’s going to turn out.
For all of those who want to say that Cain’s bid for the White House is doomed, I offer as evidence that late January day in 1992, when Gennifer Flowers held a nationally televised news conference to tell of her affair with Bill Clinton.
Many political know-it-alls said that was it for the young Arkansas Governor. But a few weeks later, he became the “Comeback Kid” and went on to win.
That’s why no one should count out Cain or anyone else at this point in time.
But the way this rollercoaster is going certainly makes some wonder.
