Sexual harassment is no private problem, readily compartmentalized, or a merely symbolic disqualifier. The allegations of sexual harassment go to the core of Mr. Cain’s qualifications to lead. Even lacking certainty about facts, what emerges as the Cain story unfolds is a picture of a man with significant deficits in terms of temperament, judgment and, potentially, veracity.

The seeming lack of concern about behavior that cost his former employer money, the sense of entitlement and belief in personal impunity, and the supposed failures to remember are disturbing enough; the accusations about his behavior toward women, abuse of authority, and inability to follow the law should be presumptively disqualifying in a person who seeks to unite and lead.

Polls indicate that some may be swayed by Mr. Cain’s denials, suggesting that the disclosures are a smear campaign, implying that these women fabricated their claims to derail his nomination. How inconvenient that the two initial claims surfaced over a decade before there was any political campaign to derail, and that Mr. Cain’s own employer apparently concluded that prudence dictated their settlement. This decision does not reflect how easily employers can be cornered. Sexual harassment law sets the bar high, even for the kind of quid pro quo demands reported by Sharon Bialek, the first of Mr. Cain’s accusers to go public.

That the National Restaurant Association decided to resolve the prior claims with compensation provides some picture of their nature: they were most likely not a one-time event (unless extremely severe), they were most likely not made by someone whose credibility could be easily demolished, and they were most likely not behaviors that would offend only an overly sensitive woman (as Mr. Cain suggested when he said that he had merely compared the height of one of his accusers, Karen Kraushaar, to the height of his wife). The law requires a pervasive pattern of unwelcome behavior of a sexual nature or acts of real severity as viewed by a reasonable person that create a hostile working environment, or demands to exchange sexual compliance for workplace benefits. Anything less would have provided the company little incentive to settle.

Mr. Cain’s assertion that the public attention to these reports is “a high tech lynching” threatens to insulate his behavior from the deeper assessment it demands. Like Mr. Thomas, whose elevation to the Supreme Court was facilitated by this statement, Mr. Cain rides a wave of suspicion and empathy. It would be wrong to dismiss the appeal of his defense, given the common dimension of public sexual humiliation and how deeply “lynching” resonates as a metaphor for black men in the real context of the sexual politics of racial hierarchy.