The Cain Takeaway: He Minimizes & Simplifies Least Reductive Problems
Nov 1st, 2011 | 14 responses
And that is not leadership.
Whether we’re talking Herman Cain’s economic plan (9-9-9 or 9-0-9) or how he and his campaign are failing to deal with Politico’s reporting on the settlement specifics between the National Restaurant Association (when Cain was its head) and two of its former employees regarding alleged sexual harassment in the workplace, Cain seems to believe that he can reduce, minimize and make disappear whatever complexities he thinks ail others from being able to come up with solutions.
The problem is, whether it’s people who view certain behavior of his as being inappropriate and constituting sexual harassment (even if he doesn’t see it that way) or people saying that his 9-9-9 plan won’t help the poor but would in fact exacerbate their economic standing, he seeks to make the complicating factors – women and the poor – disappear from the equation altogether.
Lucky for women and sadly for the poor, there are tens of millions in both groups. We won’t disappear and we don’t call people who would like to see that happen, “leader.”
Seriously, Herman. You can claim the leader mantle in a number of ways. Including, leader of the reductionists.
14 Responses to “The Cain Takeaway: He Minimizes & Simplifies Least Reductive Problems”
I agree that Cain is too simplistic in his policy approach, but if he’s being truthful about trumped up allegations of sexual harrassment (whcih frankly was all too common during the 90s when companies were overreacting to correct needed changes in the workplace), then he’s not in that case oversimplifying or overlooking something that needs to be addressed.
The local scuttlebut is that Cain really does seem to be squeaky clean in terms of his relationships with female coworkers, and I’m inclined to believe that even though I don’t support his candidacy for POTUS.
Jill:
I am inclined to agree with CStanley on this one and lean that way in a post that I will publish tomorrow on Cain’s disastrous disaster control, as well as him repeating his libel that Planned Parenthood was conceived to kill black babies.
I think we let stereotypes get the best of us — or me anyhow — when we are shocked that a black man can show so little empathy for or understanding of the poor.
Cain’s life experience is not particularly typical of blacks born in the 1940s. He rose from a comfortable background to attend a prestigious historically black college that insulated him from the violence being visited on the Civil Rights Movement.
I do not put him down for all of that, but neither do I find his diffidence toward poor people regardless of their color to be a good thing.
CStanley,
I think you’d agree with me, though, that it’s not usually the incident that’s the story, it’s the cover up.
If these were truly trumped up charges, why were the women paid what is in essence “hush money”? From what I’ve read, the women were paid off, they “left” the NRA and were told to never speak of the incident(s) again. That kind of payoff tends to be smoke where there could be fire. Couple that with the handling of this by Cain & his campaign which can’t seem to keep its story straight, I’m not quite as quick to dismiss it as nothing. Had Cain, from the get go, been more forthright about this, perhaps the story wouldn’t have the “legs” that it seems to have now.
Like all of us, I suspect, I look forward to learning enough to really feel like I understand what went on – even a little bit. Til then, my main comment is that even in the best case scenario for Cain, he would have been well-served to acknowledge that even alleging sexual harassment is something to be taken seriously and not without knowing all the facts. He just hasn’t even done that – and that is in part what I mean by his reductionism, which I feel like a lot of so-called-planning seems to reflect.
The article title and its explicit (not merely implicit) charge against Cain haven’t been validated.
It is worthwhile viewing Cain as a(nother) politician, and note that even the Left uses two phrases made commonplace by righties on the airwaves. Here, we have O’Reilly’s famous note, “made clear by what Nixon did” (with Watergate): It’s not the bad behavior, it’s the coverup.” Any kind of coverup does imply that something wrong happened.
(The other left-imitation-righty-flattery righty phrase is of course Limbaugh’s “follow the money.” Lefties tracking funds back to the Koch brothers these days provide a good example of this.)
I have no idea if Cain was guilty of harassment. I do know that the way he and his campaign have handled this issue after it came up just screams incompetence.
Ditto what Jim said.
And @sentry- I don’t have a clue and haven’t stated anything re: what Cain actually did or didn’t do. My observation is that the one thing he’s failed to say, recognize or acknowledge is that sexual harassment and allegations of sexual harassment, whether from an accuser or being mentioned by the accused, are damn serious matters that demand respect all the way around. Cain has continued to trivialize and minimize it as he has tried to respond. All the way around – he has responded in the exact opposite ways crisis communications folks tell you to respond, whether the allegations are fiduciary malfeasance or sexual harassment. Big, big mistakes being made on Cain’s part. And this post is an expression of my opinion that Cain’s interpretation of leadership seems to involve a lot of that kind of sloppiness in ignoring what he just doesn’t think works for him so well, even if others tell him he has to address something.
Well, first of all, while I agree there was room for improvement on how Cain and his team handled this, I disagree with Jill and others who feel it was completely inept.
@Anna- from my perspective, there hasn’t been a coverup here or even close to it. And on top of that, had the campaign team operated in a well-oiled and well- prepared manner to these allegations then that would suggest more strongly that there was actual wrongdoing because this event or events would have been on their radar screen and they’d quickly go into damage control mode (probably taking notes from how Bill Clinton handled his ‘bimbo eruptions’.)
The fact that they were caught a bit off guard, and the way Cain has responded with details being a bit murky in his memory, lends more credence to the idea that it was in fact a trumped up incident which didn’t even register in his consciousness enough to realize that he’d have to answer questions about it. Now, perhaps I’m being overly generous, but my take on it derives from Cain’s reputation locally and the fact that if he had a real problem with his treatment of females in his workplace environments we’d undoubtedly be hearing more, plus the fact that I know that the sensitvity training period in the 90′s did in fact lead to a lot of false allegations which ended in settlements since they were considered nuisance lawsuits. It can in fact be difficult for men to prove a negative (“so, when did you stop harrassing the women who work for you, sir?” replaced “so, when did you stop beating your wife, sir?”
And Jill, it’s that phenomenon that causes me to disagree with you on the level of credence and importance people should place on an unproven allegation. I think that women need to understand that workplace respect has to be a two way street, and we have to acknowledge the very real concern that men have toward false accusations which can besmirch their reputations.
Now, I suppose Cain could have responded a bit more artfully and I’d probably suggest something like, “I respect the need for an investigative process if a woman feels that her workplace is inhospitable to her as a female in any way, and I understand that even unknowingly a man might communicate in a way that isn’t comfortable and we as males ought to be mindful of that. However, once a dispute has been investigated, and as in this case found to be without real merit, a settlement which wasn’t made by me personally should certainly not be considered an admission of guilt of anything on my part.”
Do you think something along those lines would be more satisfactory?
On the meme about the coverup always being worse than the crime, I think we ought to consider what we mean by that. It seems that Anna is suggesting that the reason that’s so is because a coverup necessarily indicates guilt. Well, yes and no, and in fact what’s usually meant by that meme is that the initial thing truly isn’t that big of a deal or at least could be survivable and forgiven in the political arena.
Really though I think what happens is that anyone inclined to support the person politically is going to forgive while anyone who isn’t so inclined is going to use it as a weakness to attack. So that of course is why people tend to try to obfuscate instead of laying it all on the line right away. I think we’re a bit disingenuous if we say, “oh, it’s just the coverup” because really many people would find ways to rationalize why some politicians can be forgiven for certain acts while others should be hung out to dry for the same or very similar offenses.
Also in our current rapid news cycle environment, it’s a bit ridiculous that we’ve gotten to the point where we consider a delay of 24 or 48 hours before a story is completely revealed, to be a coverup.
@Cstanley – as a lawyer and an elected official, in both capacities I’ve been witness to settlements and how they come about – the circumstances behind them, the rationales for which way to go and so on. I absolutely would never argue or suggest to anyone else that a settlement equals an admission of guilt, and I’ve not said anything remotely like that here.
My point remains the same: Cain has done absolutely ZERO to recognize the gravity of sexual harassment allegations for EITHER himself or the accusers. Instead, from the beginning, through now, he treats it as a de minimus incident that’s a part of life. If you’ve not heard this piece of info yet, after being asked multiple times about the accusations, he turned to the reporter who was questioning him and asked the reporter if he’d ever been accused of sexual harassment. When asked about whether he thought anything he’s done might be perceived as sexual harassment, he responded about liking to give flowers.
Seriously. My point is that Cain appears to be clueless as to the reality that sexual harassment – for the alleged perpetrator AND the alleged victims – is not a trifle. IMO, he is treating it as though it’s a trifle. It just isn’t and I’m always disappointed when it gets treated this way.
Another example – how Chris Matthews is dealing with it – he keeps asking guests to size up “how bad” it was – he wants to know was it “eggregious” like making someone feel like they had to go to bed with them versus, “just” a whole lot of inappropriate behavior.
That is just an absurd narrative in 2011 that makes me and a lot of other people continue to ask, have we really not gotten any further?
As always – I don’t expect or demand that anyone agree with me. I’m just explaining my views on this.
Thanks for contributing, as always.
Yes, I see your point, Jill and I have some agreement with it but probably not to the full extent.
Just to be clear, where I said that people were potentially assigning guilt to Cain based on a settlement being made, that wasn’t directed at you (see Anna’s comment where she called it hush money for an example of someone clearly doing that.)
And I don’t know if you think my suggested statement goes far enough but do you see where I’m going with that, to address the understanding of the importance of sexual harassment in general without admitting any personal guilt (which presumably he doesn’t feel is warranted and perhaps really is not?)
@CStanley Your suggested statement absolutely embraces far more of the tone that Cain should have embraced from the get-go – yes. Thank you for bringing me back to that.
For you and others, I just read this piece on the NYT blog, The Caucus – by David Brooks and Gail Collins – it’s got the tidbits in it that reflect what we’ve been discussing in this thread.
http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/11/02/is-herman-cain-finished/?scp=6&sq=cain&st=cse
Well Jill I was floored by the amount of innuendo and assumptions of guilt in that piece. First of all thy go from discussing Cain specifically to a general discussion of what often went on or goes on in sexual harrassment cases. Then it cuts to Brooks saying that he guesses that probably what happened (with Cain) was probably immoral especially considering that he’s married…WHAT?? How can a prominent opinion writer be justified in making that comment, juxtaposed with a lot of sleazy examples of sexual harrassment, without any evidence of what actually happened? It may be his personal opinion, which he’s entitled to (and for all I know he could be right but that’s the point…we don’t know.) But stating in a public column that Cain is probably guilty (implying guilty of something inappropriate but we don’t yet know how bad) is beyond the pale IMO.
lol – @CStanley – yeah, it is a bizarre piece of writing to say the least! Looks like it may be some kind of a regular/irregular feature on The Caucus blog, I don’t read that blog with any consistency so I don’t know. The NYT trying to get jiggy with it?