Sometimes you just can’t believe your eyes. Read this sentence from today’s Politics Nation (“Blumenthal Camp: Vietnam Issue Behind Us“) and then ask yourself if you or the ” Democratic strategist” is the crazy one:
“This [how Richard Blumenthal handled his Vietnam whopper-gate crisis] ended up being a textbook case in crisis management,” said a Democratic strategist who was involved in the effort.
Of course, the strategist gets the Blumenthal Badge of Bravery for having the courage to withhold his name. Gutsy. But what about that “textbook case of crisis management?” What does a textbook case consist of exactly?
Well, first you trot out the human shields at your press conference, in this case a passel of the very veterans you’ve offended by that harmless, oft-told tall-tale about your combat days in Nam. Next, you work in the “take full responsibility” line. That’s merely apology code for “Hey, I’m holding this embarrassing press conference–that’s responsibility enough. Now will you all just leave me alone?” Third, you never really say you’re sorry–because that would be an admission of guilt, and guilt is campaign kryptonite.
The only problem with the “textbook crisis management” in this case is that the public felt that Blumenthal really is guilty and really should have apologized. So when the calls for apologies mounted, the textbook crisis managers reluctantly took the dreaded step four: the apology. But instead of doing it the traditional stand-up way, they had an aide e-mail it in, in the dead of night.
By the way, for you Crisis Managers-in-Training, step four should be used very sparingly–only on those rare occasions when step three fails.
Those of us who don’t do crisis management for a living, however, know the real deal: a true “textbook case” of crisis management would have been for Blumenthal to ‘fess up on Day One instead of email it out on Day Six. But that doesn’t stop the crisis management team from implementing the step five Hail Mary: trash your opponent’s unseemly blue-collar profession. Listen to the unnamed Democratic strategist attempt a half-nelson on Linda McMahon:
But at the end of the day, even people who are nervous or who may not like what happened with him are going to rally behind him, because he’s a guy who’s been fighting from Connecticut for 20 years versus a woman who’s been making money off of whatever you want to call the WWE.
Nothing like a little New England elitist smackdown to take the focus off your dissembling boss, is there?
1936-37 Harvard swim team
Perhaps to the “textbook crisis management” team of Dick Blumenthal that’s the sort of entrepreneurial spirit we should be discouraging in these halcyon economic boom times.