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Thursday, June 07, 2007
How to clean your boots when you’ve stepped in it.
(In response to friends, here's a bit of advice I wrote last year.)When you step in stuff, you don’t leave it on your boots in hopes they will clean themselves. The recent flap about VP Cheney’s handling, or NOT handling, the hunting incident in South Texas is a textbook example of poor crisis management.Here’s what Texas mothers tell their kids, or at least what I told mine:
* You’re going to make mistakes along the way, but when you do, I better hear about it from you before I hear about it from my bridge club. That means the veep should have been the first to inform the public.
* Only 2-year-olds turn their back on you with the thought that if they can’t see you, you can’t see them. Cheney is considerably older than 2, and everyone can see him. The most interesting point that he overlooked, however, and hasn’t been reported by any of the news media that I’ve seen to date, is Texas law about mandatory reporting of gunshot wounds. Physicians must report ALL gunshot wounds to local law enforcement. I think Cheney thought he’d be able to fly under the radar, except for that pesky law.
* Don’t try to wiggle out of the truth by just telling me part of it—I can see through you. Sending the ranch owner out, a day late, to speak to a friendly reporter only made the public want to know what the rest of the story was.
* You’ll be grounded if you don’t mind me! Since Cheney usually is in an undisclosed location anyway, this one doesn’t have much bite for him. He only appears before friendly audiences, anyway.
* If you lie to me, I won’t be able to trust you again for very long time! This speaks for itself.
* You just proved to me that you’re not responsible enough for (whatever perk the child, usually a teen, wants). In another country, the vice president could have been stoned to death, because he built a nice pile of rocks for other to throw at him.
* No, “everyone’s mother lets them do it” won’t work with me, young man! This family has rules and standards and I don’t care what other parents supposedly do. Did he really think “stonewalling” would work?
* Just dry up those tears—they don’t work on me. Going to friendly Fox for an interview and displaying emotion in his voice was all well and good. But he made it all about him (It was the worst day of my life) rather than about the man he shot.
* You’re a day late and a dollar short! In this case, four days too late.
* You know EXACTLY what I expect of you! I expect him to follow his friend to the hospital, meet the media after seeing that his friend was going to be OK, and saying how terrible he felt about his carelessness that caused his friend’s injury, instead of allowing speculation that it was the friend’s fault for getting in the way. Any bird hunter knows the safety rules, and Cheney is an old bird, hunter that is.
* Don’t bring those s*#^^* boots back in this house. Clean your boots immediately before the stink sets in and can’t be eliminated.
Labels: Cheney, crisis_communications, crisis_management, politics, Texas
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