Cain Bails on NH Newspaper Interview

An interview Herman Cain had scheduled with New Hampshire’s largest newspaper fell through today, in what the New Hampshire Union Leader dubbed a “no-show.” Cain’s camp blamed the newspaper. Scheduled a week in advance, the sit-down was originally supposed to be an hour long and aired on C-SPAN. But after Cain’s Libya flub in a similar interview in Milwaukee, the campaign said it didn’t want the interview taped.

“Videos are typically used for television and it’s a newspaper,” a Cain spokesman explains to Politico. Cain instead scheduled another event, telling the Union Leader he could stop by for only 20 minutes—which the paper deemed unacceptable. “We can catch Cain anywhere for 20 minutes,” the publisher said; the sit-down interview was intended to “really size up the candidate.” The implication? The interview—which three of Cain’s rivals have already done—is key to nabbing the paper’s influential endorsement. (More C-SPAN stories.)