It’s an old story: A man and a woman meet at work and they hit it off. They’re both married, although not to each other. One lunch turns into two, two into three, and eventually they’ve got a pattern. For years, they get together two or three times a week as regularly as clockwork, share daily emails, and call each other frequently. Each makes the other happy because, in many ways, they are kindred spirits. During their get togethers, they do not worry about their respective spouses. Pretty sordid, huh?
Except it’s not. I’ve described my decade-long friendship with my fellow blogger, Don Quixote. Because we are each deeply committed to our own marriages, our relationship never veers from the enjoyably and respectably platonic. Indeed, one of my favorite lunch companions is Mrs. Don Quixote, who joins us whenever she’s not at work. She is a most delightful person, and I’m as pleased to count her among my friends as I am Don Quixote himself. Don Quixote and I are just best friends, in much the same way two women or two men share a purely non-sexual friendship. I know I feel blessed to have this friendship, and I’m pretty sure he does too.
Fortunately, our family and friends know us well, which means that they know our values well, so I don’t believe there’s ever been the breath of suspicion hovering about our friendship. But were either he or I to enter the public world and face the scrutiny of those who don’t know us, the evidence would be damning: regular assignations, phone calls, emails. It’s all there. Our honest, righteous protestations of innocence would certainly fall on innumerable deaf ears.
As I write these words, I’m aware of very limited solid evidence to support Ginger White’s claim that she had a 13 year long affair with Herman Cain. She’s pointed to phone calls. He’s admitted them, but claims that they are innocent. I also know that Ginger White doesn’t strike me as an exceptionally savory person. One could take her spotted history to mean that she’d have no compunction about having an affair with a married man, or one could take it to mean that she has a somewhat strained relationship with the truth. I don’t know.
And that’s the point: the only two who know based upon the slender evidence available are Ginger White and Herman Cain. One of them is lying. I, however, am loath to convict a person based upon what could be, as Cain says, evidence only of friendship. I happen to know a couple of older men, men in Cain’s age group and socio-economic stratum, who have gone out of their way for younger women, helping them financially or with work. Both these men adore their wives and there never was evidence (or accusation) of any impropriety. Both of them, however, clearly enjoyed the role of avuncular helper to an attractive, slightly younger, woman. It was good for their egos, although it didn’t involve anything sordid.
I haven’t been impressed with the way in which Cain has handled these sexually based allegations — although, if one assumes these attacks are indeed smears (and, absent better evidence, I do), it’s virtually impossible to rebut them in an impressive way. In the “he said/she said” battle that plays out over the liberal media, the conservative black man is always wrong.
Incidentally, I don’t have a dog in this fight. Although I briefly considered Cain as a candidate, he simply doesn’t float my boat. I like some of his ideas, I like his charm, I like his commitment to America, but he’s not the candidate for me. The one thing I’m not going to do, though, is turn my back on the man because of unsubstantiated allegations that I know, for a fact, can be subject to other, entirely innocent, interpretations.
(Photo of Herman Cain by Gage Skidmore)
Cross-posted Bookworm Room
The thing I just don’t get is this: You decide to run for President, your having an affair or have had many clandestine affairs. Knowing the climate that exists, the hyenas and jackals waiting to pounce and devour, you still decide to run, putting at risk your relationship with your children, wife, and all those dear family members, possibly losing them in the process. One theory is that he didn’t think it would ever go this far and just kept riding the train.
I don’t get it.
Another theory is that he is telling the truth and they are lying. Since this is an election campaign, and the smears perfectly fit Obama and Axelrod’s MO in previous elections, then my theory is as good as yours.
I suggest that everybody on this thread that has ever cheated on their spouse, immediately quit their jobs and go home and live in shame for the rest of their lives.
Or, anyone planning on running for president on the conservative ticket plan accordingly and live their life as if each moment is one where a small part of that moment will be revealed leaving them to defend it if it looks bad. There are many names for it. Distancing oneself from temptation, living a life above reproach, avoiding the appearance of impropriety as best you can. These are precisely the lessons that pastors teach their followers, and are expected to live up to in order to be a leader in the church.
If you failed in your life on these accounts, you are not going to be automatically kicked to the curb. You refurbish yourself and reinvent your life such that you show that you are now living the right life and will not fall back into those failed ways. If you are running for the office of the President, your job title is one filled with a vast number of more specific titles, and one of those is the moral leader of the nation. Anyone who argues that is just not so, look how Kennedy inspired the nation, and how Carter destroyed hope for a prosperous future, or how Reagan brought the nations economy and spirit back to life, to be handed over to Clinton who has caused a huge decline in the value of chastity to many.
Washington elite response to the peon citizenry. DO NOT CHALLENGE US OR WE ~WILL~ TAKE YOU OUT! Joe the plumber(average citizen Cain) actually has a chance to be POTUS without rising the years of forming and training through state level then the Washington sifter/corruption training grounds.
The only thing we know for sure is that Mr Cain hasn’t handled the allegations particularly well.
It appears that he hadn’t done any pre-planning, which seems to me to be a serious mistake. For example, if the latest accuser needed his help, doesn’t it seem likely that she wasn’t a paragon of stability. The link in the article supports the statement. Since he has admitted to having a 13-year relationship, wouldn’t a good problem solver have been smart to anticipate a potential problem and head it off? And if the cell phone calls are true, and those aren’t a safe thing to fake, 61 calls over a period of time to an unattached woman is no small number. That also should have been a clue that something might come out about the relationship.
Similar things could be said about the women who settled lawsuits. Even if the provable incidents are all demonstrably platonic and non-abusive, the fact that there are now 3 (Ginger and the two settlements) surely puts Mr Cain at least in the category of “careless men of authority”, and probably in the category of “politicians who mismanage their potential personal skeletons”. Neither one is an absolutely diqualifier, but neither is good news about a potential leader of the free world either.
It’s all about if the wife knew. You describe this relationship with your friend. His wife knows about your get-togethers. Sometimes, she joins you. You do not leave together, afterwards. You wave good-bye. It is just lunch. You call each other, or tweet, because you are in the same field, share the same interests. These are all benign things, and everyone will understand this.
Your friend is not flying you to another town, putting you up in suites, et cetera. I am not saying this is true of Cain. It is what the woman alleges. I personally think she is betraying their friendship so she can get paid. I think the whole “friendship” was really all about getting paid.
You may be right that he did this so he can get his ego stroked a little. That’s a bad sign, too, to me. I have never needed my ego stroked like that. I have encountered it once or twice, but always I recognized it for the titillation, the siren song, that it is. Indulging it is a sign of character weakness. It is a small man needing to feel like a big man, who needs affirmation of himself from someone other than himself or God.
It also is pretty much the same as cheating. It is getting emotional intimacy from a woman who is not your wife.
No, JL, I never cheated on my wife, and never even considered doing so. I do not understand men who do that. If your home life is that bad, you need to fix your home life, or get out of it. You do not get to get part of it from outside the home. When you do, you have given up on your home life, but are too cowardly, or selfish, or lazy to get out of it.
I have a feeling that Cain may be entirely innocent in these affairs, except making himself receptive to the company of women of low character, but a man of sterling character avoids assignations with such without a chaperone (read: witness). One should not just avoid impropriety, but also the appearance of impropriety.
It takes a lifetime to build a reputation, and a moment to destroy it all. Cain’s indiscretions are coming back on him, now. His reputation is now being destroyed. Whether he was guilty of sin or simply careless of the appearance, the result is the same: suspicion of his character, and the defeat of his ability to attain high office and perhaps do something great for his country. It’s all because he was not careful enough of his behavior throughout his life.
Do I have a problem with these accusations? Yes and no. If they are only spurious, then yes. But I desire such high standards that such a careless man can be brought low. I know many, many men who can meet those standards, and not because they are ambitious, but because they, too, believe in such standards. I personally do not feel the standards are really all that high, nor do these other men. They just seem high in our decadent society.
All that said, if a single check to that woman has Mrs. Cain’s signature on it, Mr. Cain is vindicated. It is proven to not be an illicit affair. Then, Ms. White is demonstrated to be the worst form of ingrate, and Cain is the decent man who is punished for doing some good. One check, one letter, one witness to her involvement,anything to show Mrs. Cain in the picture, and Cain is restored. Likewise if he can demonstrate a patten of helping not just her, but others of both genders. If he demonstrates philanthropy as a normal part of his life, then he is likewise cleared.
Somehow, I suspect, however, that such a pattern of philanthropy is not there, except as regards younger women. That will be the telling.
– we can only hope the hypocrites are content with his head; they worked hard enough for it while ignoring all the Dem presidential candidates’ sins over the decades.
I read that Ms. White owns (owned?) a business. Perhaps Cain became friends with her as a result of her business, but that’s really not unusual. When I owned a business, I made a lot of friends in the business community–some of whom were mentors, and we met for lunch or chatted on the phone occasionally. I fell ill, and some of those mentors offered to help me out so my business would stay on track. That, too, is not unusual. Business people want others to succeed because they know success is infectious in a positive way. Frankly, that’s something the dour “gimme-gimme” liberals should learn.
Full Disclosure: I support Michele Bachmann.
I haven’t liked what I’ve seen from Herman Cain during this whole affair (what a terrible choice in wording).
Nevermind the questions and allegations, Cain has shown incredible ineptness handling the issue. His spokesmen and lawyers have sent out messages that differed from Cain’s statements. Cain says this has all come out of the blue which is either a lie or blind stupidity. I know he’s not the most experienced politician in the field (one failed attempt for a GOP Senate nomination), but doesn’t he know how politics works? If there were settlements in his past did he not think they would come out? Did he know he had had a relationship (I’m not saying he had an affair, but he obviously had some sort of relationship) that would look bad if spun a certain way? Does Cain live in a fantasyland where the press never spin something to look sleazy?
As many have stated, I don’t really care about a politician’s sex life. I really didn’t care who Clinton was screwing until he started screwing the American people. But watching Herman mess up the damage control on something he should have seen coming before he announced his candidacy makes me wonder what he’d screw up if he was President.
First, let me say that I unequivocally believe that Cain is the victim of a smear campaign.
This latest accuser is another financially troubled, twice-divorced, unemployed single mother, who has claimed sexual harassment in the past, declared bankruptcy once, was accused of stalking and had a libel judgment entered against her just this year. So far in 2011, she’s had nine liens put on her property.
Cain must soldier on for no other reason than to blunt this as a tactic against future Conservatives. The lefties need to come to the conclusion that this sort of smear campaign does not work.
This is a good point. Letting the democrats win in the smear department only encourages them further. If we do not demand proof of all the accusers accusations regardless of who the accusation is against, then we’ll never be able to win in the arena of ideas. We’ll be spending to much time answering the accusations when no answer is needed. We can not give up so easily. That’s what they want. Since they can not win in the arena of ideas or truth, they will try to shut us down in any other way possible.
Yes I am a Cain supporter, but if we let them get away with this, it will only get much worse. Regardless of who your candidate is, we need to defend Cain if only to shut the democrats up and force their hand. They need to know that false accusations or innuendos against anyone will be thrown right back in their faces and proof will be required. We need to embarrass them with their own words. Only then will we shut them up.
As republicans and conservatives we should support our candidates and welcome honest debate, but we should never, EVER let the democrats and progressives dictate to us what that debate is nor decide who our nominee is going to be.
If she can be taken at face value with regard to her motive, he actually hurt himself by not being straight-forward. Initially, he should have shot down the accusations with a response about him settling because it was cheaper than “paying a bunch of damn lawyers.” Many people on both sides of the aisle understand that motivation, especially for a man who is rich enough that a lawyer might see taking on a case for a percentage later of a big damage award to be a good investment. White claimed that she saw him trashing these women and thought it only a matter of time before she was outed and trashed.
Cain, so far, has been a bit Clintonian in his handling of these women.
Well. We’ve gone from Steve Breen drawing Herman Cain as a horny toad, to a group of people that admit that there is a smear campaign, but that Cain isn’t handling it well enough.
If he stays in the race, he’ll be the next President. I think a ticket of Cain/Gingrich would be exciting in an campaign, and effective in office.
We The People vs. We The Elite People in Washington DC…simple.
We The Elite People of Washington DC have carefully carved out their “turfs” in Washington DC’s “Culture of Corruption.”(Michele Malkin’s book) Mr. Cain’s candidacy threatened this game plan of so many Washingtonian’s vested interests. So, “circling of the wagons” got underway.
Really strange bedfellows emerged: FoxNews with CNN/POLITICO, Black Caucus and RNC/DNC, Revs. Al Sharpton, Jesse Jackson and Wright (silence). Then came all of MSM railing against Mr. CAin’s “9-9-9.” Cain’s opposition to the Income tax cottage industry cropping up around the 16th Amendment, the Federal Reserve’s overreaching into political policy-making, Congressional pay scales, Federal Departmental cut-backs, et al. FEAR gripped all of These Elites. Threatened their “turfs,”i.e. status quo.
Candidacy of Bachman, Cain and even a possible run by Palin struck fear in these Washington DC Elites.
A real shame. Mr. Cain dropping out of the race because of a concerted effort by We The Elite People of Washington DC desirous of holding on to their hard fought “turf” in the “Culture of Corruption” he had vowed to clean-up.
The big loser in all this is We The People and America.
The “light on the hill” is now getting dimmer and soon to be snuffed out. God Bless America.
George Soros wins again. Sad.
Swing your support for Mr. Cain. He’s the only one to right this listing Titanic. Vote massively this 2012 election for massive fraud is staring We The People in the face.
We have to LOUDLY demand evidence until this thing is either shut up or brought to light. We cannot allow unfounded accusations do our choosing for us. If we do, the already dirty process will become a battle of who can do the other candidates in, in the most spectacular manner. There are so many sheep who will follow the latest rumor right over the cliff. The media will not dig for this truth. It is their goal to look for the spectacle.They really don’t care about truth, only number of viewers they can get to hold their breath for the next salacious utterance from their lying lips. ou should care about this even if Mr. Cain is not your candidate, because yours is next victim in the oppositions sites.