Sam Roberts, who hosts the weekly New York Times political 'Caucus' podcast [1] as well as doing metro reporting for the paper, bluntly stated that GOP candidate Herman Cain 'has no one except himself to blame' for anonymous allegations of sexual harassment, as if ignoring the possibility Cain might be innocent or the allegations exaggerated. Co-host Michael Shear agreed.
From the first exchange of the podcast, dated Friday and taped the previous day:
Sam Roberts: 'Michael, you invoked Elvis Costello in talking about the blame game when it comes to Herman Cain. But isn't the more fundamental question, that he has no one except himself to blame? And does it really matter where this story is coming from? Isn't the more important thing the substance of the story itself?'
Michael Shear: 'I think you're right, the substance is the more important thing. But the campaign, the Herman Cain campaign, was very smart, tapping into this kind of mystery in Washington as to who actually leaked the story or gave the story originally to the website that broke it, Politico, and so got everyone this week to talk about that question...'