Sunday, March 09, 2008

Geesh! Keep Your Campaign Staff From Creating Problems And You Won't Have To Fix Them! by Anthony McCarthy

It's been a bad few weeks of the two Democratic presidential campaigns getting into trouble by what gets said to the media. Both of them have had a problem with overly talkative staff saying more than they should and causing problems for both candidates at once.

So you could hardly keep from smiling hearing Gary Tuchman of CNN whining that Chelsea Clinton won’t talk to the media. “That’s not fair,” was the sub text of the snivel, I wish they’d shown him stamping his little feet as well. With the addiction that people working in Democratic political campaigns have for talking to the media after decades of experience that they are, literally, the enemy of Democrats this story was like the first breath of spring.

The idiotic provision of material by Democrats which anyone with the sense of an unpopular middle-schooler would know the media will twist into weapons to use against us and our candidates leaves you in despair. You can’t help but have more respect for Chelsea Clinton for giving them the stone-wall, cold shoulder. Anyone who is stupid enough to wonder why she doesn't choose to talk to the media, having grown up watching them trying to destroy her family with lies and distortions, is too stupid even for the cabloids. CNN putting it on is a public benefit for only one reason, it’s hilarious in its detachment from reality.

Rahm Emanuel, though he is someone I sometimes don’t like and who I frequently disagree with, has one of the best press handling techniques among Democratic politicians. Politicians, unlike a private citizen like Chelsea Clinton, can’t avoid talking to the enemy. In an idea so simple it just works, he just refuses to take it. He won’t listen to an interviewer spinning during the interview and get drawn along to the next thing, he stops and challenges the distortion and he doesn't leave it until it is said. I've heard him do it a number of times and every time I wish someone would notice and take the lesson.

If those running the DNC or the Democratic Senate and House Campaign Committees had a brain in their star struck heads they would study these two methods of media handling and instruct the candidates on their methods. Most important of all, those chatter boxes working in their campaigns have to be taught the facts of real life about dealing with the corporate media.