Last week - on my storm break - I had planned to write about Herman Cain and his various harassment allegations... but I got busy and the story kept moving. And still, what I want to write now is essentially what I wanted to write then.
Cain's response to the allegations is about Textbook 101 in How Not To Run A Campaign, but that's not of deep interest to me - to take Cain's missteps seriously is to take Cain seriously, and long before we evaluate sexual harassment charges... Herman Cain is never going to be President.
Still, the unfolding "scandal" and Cain's fumbling response says more - and more good, I think - about the state of workplace harassment allegations than many want to admit. It's easy to look at the various negative aspects - the rabid defenders of Cain, mainly on talk radio, the ugliness from his campaign operatives - and see a lot of bad news on taking harassment seriously. But from the opposite angle - where these charges are being examined and reexamined and discussed - it's worth noting some of the good that's coming out of this.
First, sexual harassment is being taken seriously, and seriously, on the right. Conservatives, male and female have noted that if these allegations have merit (I think that's a more productive description than "true" which isn't nearly as concrete as it would seem), Cain is unfit for the Presidency. That's some remarkable progress, even in recent memory. Moreover, the women making these allegations - whether Karen Kraushaar's reluctant move into the public eye, or Sharon Bialek's deliberate steps - are being given room to make their cases and be heard.
Second, there's more agreement on what constitutes "harassment" than I would ever have expected: Bialek's story of a hand up her skirt and leering "you want a job, right?" proposition didn't get a lot of people trying to explain it away with discussions of her looks, or her outfit, or "she must have misunderstood." Yes, people have noted that her charges are "he said, she said" and hard to confirm... but even then, there's two choices: either he's right that it never happened... or she's right and it did... and that means it was harassment. Similarly, Kraushaar's been clear that "you come up to my chin" is both neither harassment, nor what happened. This too, is some fairly significant progress.
It's in this context of harassment being taken fully and seriously that Cain's missteps have been so pronounced. Even Cain - reflecting his "DC outsider" status as a business world leader - has had to admit that sexual harassment is real and serious and disqualifying. His "I haven't never touched nobody" defense is too absolute and too quick to make this story go away. At the same time, Cain's been surprisingly muddled about offering the kind of simple evidence that would ostensibly prove his point - why not go back and at least review records from the National Restaurant Association before making pronouncements that can easily be disproved (like who've you met, or what setllements were paid). That's not the sign of business competence which Cain's been selling as his main positive attribute.
Cain's press conference was a similar nonstarter, full of abstract denials, a lack of specifically discussing his dealings with specific women, and a lot of third person references to "Herman Cain's decency." Cain's assessments of his own decency is neither the issue nor the point. Nor was trotting out a power lawyer like Lin Wood, who neither came off as objective nor reasonable, to simultaneously intone that sexual harassment is serious while positioning all of Cain's accusers as liars and deabeats. But then, Cain's campaign seems, even for them, remarkably ill-equipped to handle these events profesisonally or competently.
Admittedly, trying to make all of this seem to rosy would be a mistake - both Kraushaar and Bialek face some pretty ugly moments, there's a clear collection of unreconstructed men on the right who will never entirely get the issues around sexual harassment (not to mention Cain's "sexual harassment doesn't just happen to women" going on to insist that women harassmen too. Apparently man-on-man harassment is just too much to discuss). The news about our culture, as this story unfolds, isn't especially better than its ever been. There's been some change... but we still need much more.
I don't know what Cain did or did not do, and mostly, as I said, I don't especially care in the context of Cain's misbegotten run for the Presidency. It wouldn't surprise me to eventually confirm that much of what the women allege is true; it wouldn't necessarily surprise me to find out Bialek's story can't entirely be trusted, either. At best it's worth noting what progress that has been made, I think, while noting that Cain's defiant denials do him no favors. That, and keep waiting for Cain to give in, and give up.
Finally, one other point in passing: I suspect that Cain's case got harder, not easier, with the revelations out of Penn State. The revulsion we're experiencing around Jerry Sandusky's conduct will make it much harder, I suspect, for anyone to simply wave away sexually inappropriate behavior, and in Cain's case, not help him when he tries to denigrate or marginalize his accusers. It would be different, perhaps, if the Penn State story didn't revolve around sports and hadn't captivated a lot more straight men than might otherwise take notice. But for now, I don't think anyone wants to be part of a news story where "sexual acting out" is part of the storyline. And Cain's defiant stance only makes chasing him and the story that much more likely.
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