If the "News" Media Payed Half as Much Attention to Obama's Past as they Do to Herman Cain We Might Not be in This Mess

But Cain's handling of the scandal does leave room to be desired in a potential president!

I'm so sick of the Herman Cain sexual harassment story. First, anonymous and unspecified charges repeated over and over as if there might be something there and now Gloria Allred (the same woman who joked about getting groped by airport security), sexual harassment's equivalent of the publicity whoring and race baiter Jesse Jackson, shows up with some woman who has no proof whatsoever that the details of what she says actually happened.

The overkill by the so called "news" media on this story is just stunning. William Jacobson who blogs at Legal Insurrection dug up this nugget:

Days as of 8 p.m.Nov. 6 since Politico broke the story - 7
Politico news stories about or mentioning “Herman Cain“: 138
Politico news stories about or mentioning “sexual harassment“: 91
Politico news stories about or mentioning “sexual harassment” not involving Herman Cain: 0
Politico news stories showing what Herman Cain actually did: 0
Politico news stories showing specifically what Herman Cain was accused of: 0
Percentage drop in Herman Cain favorability rating as reported by Politico: 9
Politico news stories about or mentioning “Solyndra“: 9
Politico news stories about or mentioning “Fast and Furious“: 3
Politico news stories about or mentioning “unemployment“: 17
Politico news stories about or mentioning “recession“: 14
Politico’s credibility self-destruction: Priceless

And it's not just the online news source Politico that is feeding the frenzy. The major network so-called "news" shows are in the game too. Funny but they never seemed to pay that much attention to Obama's past as Noel Sheppard at Newsbusters describes:

As NewsBusters reported Monday, the broadcast network news outlets of ABC, CBS and NBC ran a total of 84 stories on the sexual harassment allegations against Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain in the week following Politico publishing its hit piece.

That is more coverage than they gave to Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama's connections to domestic terrorist Bill Ayers, convicted real estate developer Tony Rezko, or America-hating Rev. Jeremiah Wright throughout the entire campaign.

According to LexisNexis, from February 2007 when Obama announced his candidacy to Election Day 2008, ABC ran 20 stories on Ayers, CBS did thirteen, and NBC aired 8 for a total of 41.

On Rezko, the numbers were ABC 22, and CBS and NBC both doing nine for a total of 40.

As for Wright, NBC did 31, ABC 27, and CBS 24 for a total of 82.

Add it all up, and none of Obama's scandals in over 20 months garned the attention from the networks that Cain's did in one week.

O.K. I can hear some liberal reader out there sputtering that sexual harassment is just so much more important a story than Obama's connections to a bunch of Chicago crooks, crazies and communists.

Fine, so how do you explain the "news" networks near total indifference to the Clinton sexual harassment scandals? The Media Research Center went back and did the digging and the following chart sums it up:

Bill Ayers, the unrepentant terrorist and
 associate of Obama.

Allow me digress for just a moment. I would not agree that the character questions raised about Obama's Chicago associations are trivial. After all, the story of his connection to the former Weatherman terrorist Bill Ayers is entirely relevant in explaining Obama's approach across the spectrum of U.S. policy. Don't you think it says something that Obama is linked to a man who on September 11, 2001 is depicted in the New York Times trodding on the American flag?

Cain Failed Crisis Mgmt. 101

Having said all the above I have serious concerns about the way in which Herman Cain and his campaign handled the scandal. I'm not the only one who has noticed that they were apparently unprepared for the scandal, even though they knew it was coming. Also, Cain's actions, or inactions, contributed to making the story bigger than it might otherwise have been.

Again, it raises the issue of the seriousness and competence of Cain and his campaign team. This isn't the first time Cain has stuck his foot in his mouth. Writing at Commentary, Peter Wehner said that Cain's stumbling explanations not just for this scandal but in other areas has been "incoherent" in regard to "what Herman Cain has said on abortion, trading GITMO prisoners for hostages, appointing Muslims to a Cain cabinet, and his knowledge of a sexual harassment settlement agreement." Wehner went on to sum up Cain's campaign:

If the Cain campaign is not the most amateurish of any presidential campaign in decades, I’m open to suggestions as to which ones were worse.

This is beyond embarrassing; it has now entered the land of Saturday Night Live​ parody. And that’s never a good place for a presidential campaign to be.

That last paragraph of Wehner's is a bit harsh and I would disagree with those who say Cain's campaign is going down the tubes. But time is running out before the voting starts in Iowa on January 3rd and Cain still has not put together the kind of organization one typically would expect from someone at the front of the pack. The same is true here in South Carolina.

In the end, the public missteps of Herman Cain may only be a sign that the campaign as a whole was never really prepared to tackle the nuts and bolts of electoral politics at this level. I could be wrong, but to the annoyance of my liberal critics that doesn't happen very often!