The candidate who should be gone

Herman Cain should be glad he's not running for Norfolk's City Council. Or the Virginia Statehouse. Or the governor's mansion.

Because the allegations against him - their weight and number and his explanations - would be enough to finish any other political career in any other setting.

As it is, he seems to be hanging on near the top of a large crowd running for the Republican Party's presidential nomination.

Since the allegations first surfaced in Politico late last month, he says he's seen contributions jump.

Cain has been accused of making inappropriate advances to several women in the 1990s, including women who worked for him at the National Restaurant Association. Two women received financial settlements.

At Wednesday night's debate, a question about the allegations drew jeers. For those asking the question.

Here's how The Washington Times reported the candidate's response: "The American people deserve better than someone being tried in the court of public opinion based on unfounded accusations," Cain said, igniting applause from the crowd at Oakland University in Rochester, Mich. "They're saying they don't care about the character assassination, they care about leadership and getting this economy growing and all of the other problems we face."

One person's character assassination, of course, is another person's question of character. Sadly, exactly when character questions become character assassination seems to depend on who's doing the asking and who's doing the answering.

Cain's defenders among the Republican Party's pundits and chatterers have been eager to deploy the kind of double-reverse racial outrage that makes Americans of every hue squirm more than a little. They've also been happy to transform uncertainty about the allegations into disgust with the messenger.

So far, those tactics seem to be resonating enough to keep Cain's candidacy viable, at least among those engaged in an election still a year away.

Nobody can know whether any of this will continue to work as the scandal unfolds, just as we can't possibly know whether Cain did any or all of the things he's accused of doing back in the 1990s.

I know that limelight-seeking attorney Gloria Allred's involvement is one of the signs of the coming celebrity apocalypse, which seems strangely appropriate given the story.

Allegations of sexual harassment are notoriously difficult to prove, which is why they often settle into the kind of irresolvable back and forth that mirrors our national political conversation. They are equally difficult to defend for the same reason.

Ultimately, it comes down to how well a person explains his case. And whether you like Cain or not, he has acquitted himself badly in his own defense, changing his story several times, forgetting the financial settlements, defending himself ad hominem, finding conspiracies, if not the conspirators.

A man making a similarly ham-handed defense of similar charges would have no chance in an election for a city council. A man facing similar charges would have no chance to be elected to a city's Soil and Water Conservation Board, let alone to the General Assembly or to statewide office.

Allegations like this against the man now in the White House would effectively end his presidency, as it would have done to his predecessor.

For any other office, for any other president - including for President Bill Clinton - these kinds of charges should be devastating and almost certainly conclusive.

For Cain, at least so far, they are not.

I'm not sure I know why that is. The Republican Party might want to figure that out before it nominates him for the White House.

Donald Luzzatto is The Pilot's editorial page editor. Email: donald.luzzatto@pilotonline.com.