Early in October, the improbable shooting-star candidate was preening with David Brody on the Christian Broadcasting Network, saying he “felt like Moses when God said ‘I want you to go into Egypt and lead my people out.’ ” He bragged that he was ready for the gotcha questions from the press, saying: “When they ask me who’s the president of Ubeki-beki-beki-beki-stan-stan, I’m going to say, ‘You know, I don’t know. Do you know?’ ”

Image Credit... Fred R. Conrad/The New York Times

Yet despite being aware that the scandal would surely pop at some point, and despite 10 days’ warning from Politico, which broke the news, Moses was flailing in the media Red Sea.

When Politico’s Jonathan Martin waited outside the CBS News bureau here to catch Cain after “Face the Nation” and ask him, “Have you ever been accused, sir, in your life of harassment by a woman?,” the candidate’s lame riposte was: “Have you ever been accused of sexual harassment?”

If your appeal lies in being refreshingly plain-spoken, you can’t turn into a verbal corn maze.

He has contradicted himself even more risibly on his memory of the harassment charges than he has on his abortion position.

At first, he said he wasn’t aware of the five-figure settlement to one woman; then, suddenly, he was aware. Instead of the meaning of “is,” Cain tried to parse the meaning of “settlement” versus “agreement.” He still claims he doesn’t remember the other five-figure settlement to another woman.

His memory may soon be jogged. A lawyer for one of the women, an Ivy League grad who works for the federal government and lives in suburban Maryland, said that she wants to be released from a confidentiality agreement on the settlement since Cain is going around disparaging the accusers.

Trade association boards have been known, especially in the flush ’90s, to lavish money on silly things: face-lifts for top executives and their wives and payoffs to executives’ cast-off mistresses.