Cain Campaign Becoming One Long Awkward Moment

By Jackie Koszczuk // November 21, 2011 | 4:09 p.m.

Pizza magnate Herman Cain, newly deposed from top-tier status in a USA Today/Gallup poll out today, has thought better of his decision to blow off the powerful New Hampshire Union Leader newspaper.

Publisher Joe McQuaid said via Twitter today that the candidate has agreed to an hour-long interview to be taped by C-SPAN next week. Cain relented after snubbing the newspaper in the first-in-the-nation primary state last week when McQuaid refused his demand to limit the interview to 20 minutes without a camera in the room.

Cain was no doubt hoping to avoid a repeat of the fiasco in Milwaukee, when a similar meeting with Journal Sentinel editors and reporters produced one of the most awkward moments in modern politics: Cain struggling through several long pauses to answer a basic foreign policy question about whether he agreed with President Obama's foreign policy in Libya.

His inability in several venues now to pass even a basic presidential timber test may be fueling Cain's fall in the polls. He was in third place in the Gallup survey, having been displaced by former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, who was in a statistical tie for first place with Mitt Romney.