This was not a good phone interview for Team Cain.

Via @ewerickson… actually, it’s going around and around and around, but I have to H/T somebody.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gclK_CYyspE&feature=player_embedded#!

Anyway, for those without video, it’s a phone interview where Geraldo Freaking Rivera scores points off of Herman Cain spokesman JD Gordon over yesterday’s allegations of past sexual harassment charges made against the candidate.  Gordon was unprepared, and (at best) uninformed about the facts about the case; he should not have taken that call, frankly.  Particularly since I’m hearing that the Cain campaign had ten days to prepare.

There are two issues here: the allegations, and the reaction to them.  The allegations are the easier ones to address: the original Politico article is thinly sourced, and frankly can be easily seen as being merely examples of nuisance lawsuits where the target made the decision that it’s easier to just pay the stupid Danegeld and hope that gets rid of the Dane*.  Not having more information, I’m not going to make a declarative statement that this is indeed what happened here: but it’s plausible.  It’s also plausible that Politico had been fed the entire story entire** (they’re… getting that reputation).

The problem is that Team Cain’s reaction was… well, honestly, what you’d expect from a campaign infrastructure that’s in the middle of its first campaign together.  Damage control from the original story was probably necessary, but there is no universe out there where the Geraldo/Gordon phone interview helped Herman Cain; and it left us cynical online pundits and activists raising an eyebrow and wondering if the underlying problem is going to be addressed, assuming that it was actively sensed in the first place.

The good news for the Cain campaign is that there’s still have two months before the first actual election to fix their message discipline and response strategy.  The bad news is that they need to do so.

Moe Lane (crosspost)

*Kipling was an excellent poet; but I’ve never heard that he was a particularly stellar civil attorney.

** I’ll spare you the speculation as to from whom, if only because every time I point out one of Team Romney’s flaws RedState suddenly gets a bunch of first-time posters who try to spam the comments section with pro-Mitt agitprop.

Oops, did I type that out?  Seriously, if these people are being paid: they’re really, really bad at it.