There is more to go on than just body language, although not too much.
The most important thing to go on is the existence, indeed the pre-existence, of documents which reflect that the allegations were made long before anyone could have expected Herman Cain to run for political office.
It is true we do not know the nature of the allegations and, because of the overbroad scope of the law, it is possible that allegations of the most trivial nature might constitute their contents. But there are three such collections of allegations and the odds are that they are not all trivial.
It is possible that the allegations were settled for money merely to dispose of them as nuisances, but, again, not likely that all three fell into that category. Especially is it unlikely because they were sealed, indicating that one side or the other felt that the contents would be damaging. Odds are that the side felt most threatened by the allegations contained in the documents was The National Restaurant Association. If the allegations were trivial the association had nothing to hide. If the allegations were egregious the association would have acted to protect its image. Those considerations do not apply to the women who, at most, might have had an interest in avoiding embarrassment but not guilt.
We do in fact have a credible witness, credibility is a subjective value, and I find Bialek to be more credible than Cain. That judgment is based on many factors besides body language but it includes motive to lie and, clearly, Herman Cain has a more potent motive to lie. He is motivated to become the most important and powerful man in the world. I cannot perceive any personal aggrandizement which she might reasonably have expected to gain by insinuating herself into this scandal which could possibly compensate her for the calumnies which she must have known she would sustain. In determining this, we must conclude that one of the two is lying; we cannot simply attack Bialek in the abstract but in relation to the credibility of Cain and weigh one against the other.
We have Cain's less than credible handling of the scandal, his backtracking etc. You have felt constrained to defend it and that is only illustrative of its weakness. So far, his public statements on the matter have been far, far less credible than Bialek's. Bialek's credibility must be judged relative to Cain's and vice versa. He does not come off well in comparison.
Now we have another woman who has gone before the world and said that she would publicly comment, conditioned on the participation of the other two anonymous women. So we have women, we have documents, we have motive, and, yes, we have body language. Drip, drip, drip.
I do not maintain that the evidence is overwhelming but it is certainly in preponderance against Cain. My conviction is that it will get worse.
As the evidence against Cain mounts as it did against Bill Clinton, his supporters will be forced into ever more and more ludicrous rants which damage the Republican brand and improve Obama's chances in the general election.
As and when that scenario emerges it will be appropriate again to ask yourself whether we are painted into this corner because we persist in associating adherence to cultural mores about sex with effectiveness of a chief executive. Maybe it's a question of something we believe because we have always believed it.
