The top communications officer at a big chemical company once told me that he knew it was time to quit his job when they had a chemical spill and the CEO called him and said, “Get down here, we have a PR problem.”
His point was that a chemical spill was an environmental and health disaster first and foremost, not some kind misunderstanding that needed to be addressed with public education or spin.
The resignation of White House Communications Director Mike Dubke and the leaks emanating from the White House suggest that President Trump and his family believe the administration’s core problem lies in public relations. While this is a common reaction among people and organizations under siege, scapegoating flacks both overestimates the power of communications and underestimates the corrosive effect of having the kind of problems that aren’t cured by spin.
In the damage control field, you are presented with a client with a particular set of flaws operating in a particular environment. Spinmeisters are not going to change Trump nor can they stop adversaries from being adversaries. Trump himself has created core problems by the things he says and does that validate his enemies’ lines of attack.
The intersection of Trump’s longstanding affection for Putin and the alleged activities of top advisors such as General Michael Flynn and Jared Kushner is the primary case in point, regardless of whether or not anyone has done anything wrong. After all, where there is smoke there is not always fire, and sometimes smoke inhalation is enough to kill the principals in a scandal.
Not to mention their handlers: There’s a reason why PR people are called flacks – because they take a lot of shrapnel in defense of unpopular clients and causes. Replacing communications people rarely accomplishes much besides providing the temporary illusion of action. To remain in a thankless job like Press Secretary Sean Spicer’s, one has to accept that you will be perpetually accused of “mishandling” things that are, in fact, beyond your control.
Part of Spicer’s job is getting blamed. But it is also to set narrow objectives. The National Rifle Association knows that its job is to win legislative battles, not get people feeling better about gun violence. So that’s what the NRA does.
According to news reports, Trump’s former campaign officials, Corey Lewandowski and David Bossie, will be setting up a crisis management war room inside the White House. If true, I see their narrow objective as beating back the Russia fallout and impeachment chatter.
Put differently, the aim is crisis management, not getting Trump’s enemies to love him or passing sweeping legislation; it is to reduce the frequency, intensity and damage from attacks. The crisis team will know it has been effective if Trump remains in office. To this end, every allegation beaten down or obfuscated is a win, every day survived an achievement.
Damage control is all about losing by less than originally anticipated. Whether they’re called, flacks, spin doctors or crisis managers, the same holds true for their reputations. Being accused of mismanaging a spin campaign is an unavoidable casualty of high-stakes PR wars. And, yes, communicators must factor this into their career choices — the assignments they take, avoid and resign.
In the meantime, Trump’s team has my sincerest non-partisan empathy. It’s not easy when pundits who have never been in withering battles succumb to the fallacy that “mishandled” spin is the reason for problems whose real causes run much, much deeper.
Eric Dezenhall (@EricDezenhall) is the CEO of Dezenhall Resources, a crisis-management firm in Washington, D.C. He is also the author of “Glass Jaw: A Manifesto for Defending Fragile Reputations in an Age of Instant Scandal.”
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