Managing Scandal in the Age of Obama2009-01-09

 Thursday Morning Quarterback—Managing Scandal in the Age of Obama

It’s long been said that when they start talking about scandal in Washington, D.C., there’s little room to talk about anything else. Now that the nascent Obama administration has been hit by a kamikaze called Blagojevich, it’s fascinating to watch the vast difference between how the 44^th President differs from the 43^rd when it comes to putting out the fire.

There are also some good lessons for the rest of us about handling a public crisis, no matter the size of the fishbowl in which you live.

Every President shoots himself in the foot during a four-year term. Those mistakes and the immediate aftermath forge their identities. For example, the script of Team W shooting itself in the foot went something like this:

First response: “I didn’t hear any shots.”

Second response: “That’s ketchup on the floor, and if you say its blood, you are an unpatriotic liar.”

Bleeding to the last drop, Mr. Undisclosed Location is still fighting with the National Archives about the definition of “private” versus “public” papers of the Vice President.

Credit Team W with following one of the cardinal rules of crisis communications: getting its message out ahead of the media cycle to try to shape opinion; unfortunately, it habitually broke one of the other cardinal rules: telling the truth. While it worked once or twice, this modus operandi of mistake management is called winning the battle while losing the war, an appropriate metaphor for this President.

On the other hand, Team O promised Americans a different, more open and inclusive kind of politics--a pledge  that sounded a bit ethereal until we saw the first crisis unfold.

Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich has cemented (pun intended) his name with the likes of infamous Americans like Elbridge Gerry (the father of gerrymandering), and Boss Tweed and Tammany Hall. For the President-elect, this could have been the type of $400 haircut on the L.A.X. tarmac scandal that undermined the first year of the Clinton administration and undercut his credibility with Americans.

Instead, within 24 hours of the story breaking, Obama had disassociated himself from Blagojevich, called on the Governor to resign his office and has since spoken out against seating the Governor’s choice for the U.S. Senate seat, even though it could leave him with one less reliable vote in the chamber and at the risk of offending his core African-American constituency.

In a sharp departure from the Bush administration, Team Obama followed the counsel of Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis who remarked, “sunlight is the best disinfectant,” and provided federal agents investigating the matter with a record of all correspondence between members of the Transition Team and the disgraced Governor.

Message to the American people: There are no sacred cows when it comes to ethics in this administration.

Recovering Fumbles

First, no matter how smart and capable your team, resign yourself to the fact that if you or your organization is in the public eye for any length of time, one of these moments is inevitably going to happen to you. Spending valuable time wondering how and why this is happening is beside the point, especially when the initial wave of press is the most critical.

In the Google Age, the first stories that are posted on the Internet are the defining stories that will be emailed, aggregated and linked by readers and bloggers. They will also become the de facto historical record, as they will dominate the first page of every Google/Yahoo/MSN search engine for years to come. Right now, eight of the top 10 hits on the name Rod Blagojevich are related to this scandal, despite him occupying the Governor’s office for the last six years.

This has made rapid response all the more critical because while once upon a time the media might wait for a statement or a press conference, Mark Twain’s quote about a lie traveling half way around the world before the truth gets out of bed has never been so apt as in our web based 24-hour news cycle.

To that end, in a crisis you are never alone if you have a listserve because those are the people who will be your surrogates on the Internet, but be prepared to embrace less control over the message and the messengers.

Also, since its unlikely your campaign or organization can claim Executive Privilege, lying to the media in the face of the one-two punch of search engines and electronically filed Freedom of Information Acts is a guaranteed way to turn an awkward one-day story into a cascading career and company avalanche of bad press. 

It appears the Obama administration has taken to heart the adage that so many of his predecessors ignored: “It’s not the crime, but the cover up that kills you.” When it comes to handling a crisis in the Google Age of Transparency, that advice has never been sounder.