pop quiz, hotshot

1. you are the head of a state criminal justice organization. the governor has suspended your contract after questions begin to surface concerning a $417k grant you gave to a local businessman. the businessman does not appear to have done any of the work he's contracted to do. even worse, a local tv station has just aired a story on the 11pm news about you and your questionable deal with this businessman. what do you do?

A. publicly confess that you screwed up and resign
B. go to the press explaining why you did nothing wrong
C. "go dark" and quietly wait for everyone to forget the whole thing
D. let yourself be photographed partying in public with your arm around the businessman in question


2. you are the governor. one of your appointees has decided to resign from his post as a public servant and outsource his job... to himself. he was making $100,000/year + benefits when he was your employee. under the terms of the contract that he signed with himself, as a freelancer he will receive $180,000/year. people in the media have started to criticize you and your former employee, calling the contract a sweetheart deal and wondering why you will be paying the ex-employee almost twice as much to do the same work he was doing before he resigned. what do you do?

A. immediately cancel the contract and apologize to your constituents
B. launch an investigation and get to the bottom of it
C. promise you're going to launch an investigation, but do it bush-style, so that the investigation never happens or has no teeth
D. defend the contract for a week, then finally give up, cancel the contract, and accept the employee back into his old job with his original $100k salary


3. you are running for state congress. you have just defeated a powerful incumbent in the primary and are now preparing for the november election. however, instead of talking about your impressive primary win, people are making fun of your past support for public flogging. they're calling you "the flogger" and have even begun making parody websites about you. what do you do?

A. try to change the subject: "let's talk about the real issues"
B. denounce your prior statements on flogging, saying you've realized the idea is kinda stupid
C. deny that you ever supported flogging (difficult because you wrote a letter to your local paper about flogging a few years ago)
D. explain to the political columnist from the largest paper in your state that flogging is actually a "'compassionate' alternative to jail for some people convicted of crimes such as drug abuse or being drunk in public"


answers:
1. if you have anything resembling good PR judgment, you would pick A, or maybe even pick B or C and pray that you keep your job. if you are heather bolejack of the ICJI, you pick D and you are fired.
2. if you're inspector general dave thomas, you would do B. but the question assumes "you are the governor", not the inspector general. if you're governor mitch daniels and your employee is richard rhoad of the FSSA, you would do D.
3. yes, A, B, or even C would be a smart move. but by now you've probably guessed that greg walker chose D. i know, i know, this quiz wasn't very difficult, and all the answers were D.¶