Why did a picture of Maryland Attorney General (and gubernatorial hopeful) Douglas F. Gansler at a wild teenage party make national news? Well, according to Gansler, “[T]here are definitely people who don’t want me to become governor, and you have to sort of ask yourself why that would be.”
But there’s a problem with the persecution-complex defense. Whoever you are, whatever office you’re running for, there will be people who don’t want you to win. (It’s kind of the nature of an election: you face one or several opponents.) It’s not enough to avoid owning up to a scandalous moment in which you not only tacitly condoned underage drinking, but essentially facilitated it.
And he accepted some limited amount of responsibility. He said he should have done more to check for alcohol consumption at the weeklong party where overprivileged high school seniors were somehow both unleashed and coddled by their parents.
Gansler’s novel scandals are really too bad, because it leaves us with no one within the Democratic party to mount a challenge to Gov. Martin O’Malley’s heir apparent, Lt. Gov. Anthony Brown — generally a good policy.
