Presidential Sex Scandal

Herman Cain is the new flavor of the month for the Republican Party in their long quest o nominate someone who is not Mitt Romney as a presidential candidate. Like the non-Mitt-Romney forerunners before him, Cain is undergoing the scrutiny that is common to all individuals who seek the office of presidency.

 Like his predecessors, he is experiencing the awkward exposure of skeletons from his past. However, unlike the previous front runners who dealt with offensively named hunting lodges (Rick Perry) and the public's realization that they were insane (Michele Bachmann), Cain must deal with a far more serious and politically damaging secret.

Cain is being forced to face charges of sexual harassment made by former female employees while he was the head of the National Restaurant Association (NRA) in the 1990's. Though Cain has denied these claims repeatedly, according to CNN, it is fact of public record that the Association reached settlements with these women.

While conservative pundits have referred to this exposé on Herman Cain's history as a liberal conspiracy, this opinion columnist disagrees. First of all, Cain, referring to one accuser as "troubled" and scrutinizing her history, harkens back to the days when women who accused men of harassment, abuse, or even rape, were judged solely on the basis of their sexual history.

This kind of behavior is unacceptable in today's world. I understand the political and personal instinct that Cain must feel to protect his reputation, but lying about the circumstances of the situation and more importantly perpetuating a "blame the victim" mentality just makes him look guiltier.

I understand that I do not know what was going on at the NRA in the latter part of the ‘90's, but I do know that these women made claims against Cain. These claims were very specific about Cain demanding sexual favors from these employees, and that each one was settled out of court; one woman reportedly received $46,000 in a settlement.

I also know that Herman Cain has lied every step of the way about the entire situation. He denied knowing anything about these settlements and then later changed his story every time new facts arose that he could not dispute.

As much as Cain is trying to blame the situation on a liberal conspiracy against him, the facts do not lie. These accusations were not made, as the Cain campaign would like you to believe, by opportunistic women of ill-repute, who just came out of the woodwork to ruin Cain's life.

The facts are that several different female employees of the NRA, independently of each other and over the course of three years, individually accused Cain of graphic harassment. This is not some liberal media conspiracy to sink a Republican candidate; these are facts.

Again, I will preface that I do not know for sure what happened between Cain and these women. However, I find it highly unlikely that five separate women would file separate yet similar claims against the same man over the course of three years on the off-chance that said man might run for president fifteen years later.

The fact that discrediting the "reputation" of a woman claiming sexual harassment or sexual assault is still acceptable in this day and age is reprehensible. I do not know which part of Herman Cain's sex scandal avoidance plan disturbs me the most: the retro "blame the victim" mentality that his campaign has adopted towards the accusers, or the fact that he is clearly lying to the American people.

The fact is Herman Cain has lied. Whether or not you believe he attempted to force these women into sexual acts against their will, it is clear that Herman Cain has not been truthful about the situation. Someone who does not respect women or the American people enough to be honest to them does not deserve to be President of the United States.