North Carolina Gov. Bev Perdue's Reaction to Jay Parmely Shows Dems Are Bad at Handling Sex Scandals

Impact

In a recent sex scandal by Democratic Party chairman of North Carolina Jay Parmely, Democratic Governor Bev Perdue responded to a local reporter by stating "get over it" when questioned about the on-going sexual harrassment scandal. Just a few hours later, Governor Perdue changed her mind and supported his resignation "for the good of the party." It probably helped that a lot of Democratic officials in NC had already called for Parmely's resignation. While generally the Democrats in this instance have been handling this sex scandal pretty well, it would seem that the Governor's initial reaction reveals a problem with Democratic PR. It indicates that the Democrats initial reaction to any scandal is deny, deny, deny.

When confronted about his affair with an intern in the Oval Office, President Clinton lied under oath and introduced a whole new standard of ethics: situational ones. His post-modern questions of the meaning of words like is sent the country into an uproar. If Clinton had just come clean when he was first confronted by the accusation that became the infamous Lewinsky escapade, he would not have been impeached. Period. Congress doesn't impeach people for bad morals, and, quite frankly, America already knew what they were getting into when they elected Mr. Clinton. Still, despite the fact that he already knew what he had done, he continued to deny his illicit affair to the point of lying under oath, which Congress deemed an impeachable offense and dragged the country through months of this crazy spectacle.  One of the only things I actually remember about Clinton's presidency as a child is the Lewinsky scandal.

Fast forward to 2011. Two words: Anthony Weiner.  Representative Weiner denied and denied and even blamed the late Andrew Breitbart for hacking his account. Weinergate put the Dems in a pickle because Anthony Wenier had been the posterboy for progressive thought in a variety of ways for many, many years. If he went down, it was almost like one of their heroes was going down ... so for a month or so, Weiner along with many other Democratic leaders, denied the accusations despite the evidence that Breitbart and company had.

I think this scandal in North Carolina caught Governor Perdue off guard. She automatically went into defense mode without realizing that 1) Parmely resigned pretty quickly after he was named in the scandal and 2) Many of  her fellow Democrats were already condemning the actions of their comrade. She is used to automatically going into defense mode. It would seem that, at least in North Carolina, the Democrats may have learned a lesson or two from the escapade from last summer. Instead of dragging this sexual harassment case to be another Weinergate, at least they have generally called for Parmely's resignation. Finally, the Democrats condemn their own bad behaivor.