Herman Cain’s damage control strategy with the media might just be causing more damage for him in the key first primary state of New Hampshire, with the campaign blowing off a scheduled interview with the state’s largest paper, the conservative New Hampshire Union Leader.
Union Leader editorial page editor Drew Cline tweeted late Thursday morning that Cain was late for a 10 a.m. interview, followed by this heckle: “If Cain is more than 30 minutes late for our interview, is our next one free? #fitn”
Finally, Cline tweeted:
Cain campaign said we’d do a one-hour interview. Then said no video taping. Then said interview only 20 mins. Then canceled. #fitn #winning
An article posted at the Union Leader tells of how the Cain campaign told the paper that it did not want C-Span taping the interview. Things went downhill from there:
The news network had videotaped for broadcast and its website the newspaper’s recent interviews with three other major presidential candidates.
After confusion arose over whether the interview had been cancelled, Cain’s campaign apparently scheduled another event at roughly the same time and said Cain could appear at the newspaper for only 20 minutes.
Publisher Joseph McQuaid rejected the suggestion, telling the campaign that if Cain could not appear for the full 60 minutes, then there would be no interview.
McQuaid said today that 20 minutes was not enough time for a “formal, sit-down interview” during which he and other newspaper staff “size up” the candidates.
About 45 minutes after Cain’s 10 a.m. appointment, Union Leader Senior Political Reporter John DiStaso received a brief telephone message from Cain New Hampshire spokesman Charlie Spano.
“I hope we can connect in the future,” Spano said. Spano did not return our additional call seeking further comment.
This comes, of course, a after Cain badly fumbled an interview with the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, in which video was posted online of him struggling to explain his stance on President Obama’s intervention in Libya.
“I do not agree with the way he handled it, for the following reasons — No, that’s a different one,” Cain said, pausing, and seeming as if he was working from rote memorization (and mixing up his answers). “I gotta go back, see. (Pauses) Got all this stuff twirling around in my head. Specifically, what are you asking me, did I agree or not disagree (sic) with Obama?”
