Each year end, public relations (PR) practitioners are quizzed on what they think are the top-five PR crises of the year.
Since I work more in politics than in business, I chose to consider the top five political – presidential – PR crises.
These are, from the inside, fairly obvious.
Number one has to be Trump getting shot, then almost immediately starting to manage the message even before a negative one could get out there.
He did this by fist-bumping the sky (on camera) and shouting “Fight, Fight, Fight.”
Surviving being shot could have proved a disaster, for one simple reason. If Trump had cowered or even reacted stunned, he could be painted as “less than” by an unfriendly media. The whole world would have seen it, so no post-shooting response could walk back an “apparently” cowardly reaction. But Trump instinctively reacted as the street-fighter his bio likes to suggest he once was, and it actually played well.
The second crisis was the aftermath of the disastrous Biden-Trump debate. Actually, the disaster wasn’t so much of a failed debate, but the media’s – and the Democrat leadership’s – collective reaction.
I watched it all and I felt, with the exception of one moment (the famous Medicare line) the debate was a near-draw. In fact, I told my wife – also a seasoned political campaign pro – that I was disappointed that Trump let his anger get in the way. I frankly expected the Dems would rally around the president.
After all, in each election season, the ultimately winning candidate lost – big – an earlier debate, but rallied back. Even Reagan, the great communicator and 49-state victor in 1984, lost his first debate with Walter Mondale, of all people.
But the crisis for Biden was the way his own leading Democrats talked themselves into a feeding frenzy of horror at having Biden for a candidate. They kept pushing one another (and Biden), forcing him to step down until, three weeks later, he could no longer mount a viable campaign.
His was the first presidential coup d’état – admittedly a bloodless one – in American history. Never before had a sitting president, nominated and running for re-election, been forced out by his own party.
Hellbound and Down 