Is there really no such thing as bad publicity? It’s a hackneyed expression that is grounded more in optimism than reality. It is also a communications policy that might sometimes be applicable to the entertainment world but almost never to the political.
Ultimately the 24/7 news cycle might have rendered it null and void because bad publicity is no longer a piece in the evening newspaper but a repeating message that develops a life of its own.
So what do we make of President Donald Trump’s new White House communications director Anthony Scaramucci? His obscene and profanity-laden description of Trump’s former chief of staff Reince Priebus reveals at least two things about the new communications strategist on the Hill.
First, he clearly doesn’t understand that when talking to the media, nothing is ever “off the record” if your statements to a reporter are so outrageous they beg publication. It is a primary rule of media relations that you should never tell a journalist anything that you don’t wish to see on the evening news. Whether Scaramucci told the reporter that his rant was off the record or whether he believed it was is, irrelevant. Just keep your mouth shut if all you can provide to a reporter is your dirty laundry.
Second, Scarmucci doesn’t seem to know the difference between that dirty laundry and the news. Using language in the presence of a reporter that is more befitting a street thug than a presidential spokesman reveals a profound indifference to the sanctity of the office that Scaramucci represents. Neither the media nor the public has any right to know of the internal squabbling in the president’s office and the president’s chief spokesman should be ensuring that this sordid office in-fighting — which inevitably brings forth nothing but bitter fruit — stays in the office and not another excuse for CNN to deride the chaos in the White House.
But Scarmucci is clearly following the lead of his boss, who has taken to routinely castigating his Attorney General on social media and thereby undermining his own administration. At least Trump has avoided the vulgarities that seem to be an integral part of Scarmucci’s vocabulary.
Perhaps it is time for the Trump administration to embrace some degree of finesse especially since, for all of its tough talk, it has yet to drain any swamps in Washington.
This is an important point to remember because those Trump voters are becoming increasingly exasperrated at watching their president spin his legislative wheels while hiring and firing staff. If I recall correctly, the Repubicans won not only the presidency last November but the House and Senate as well. Yet the Democrats are clearly seeming to control the agenda in D.C. They won the budget debate, stalled the wall and retained Obamacare. Now that’s a great delivery on policy for a party that is not only in the minority but which has failed to enunciate any policy except resistance to the Trump and making bigger and better jobs out of thin air.
Moreover, they have successfully sold their Protocols of the Learned Elders of the Kremlin conspiracy to Republican senators like John McCain and Lindsey Graham who are sometimes more Russophobic than Nancy Pelosi. So while we remain immersed in a phony crisis of Russian interference and Trump’s alleged collusion with the new evil empire, the Democrats have succeeded in making most Americans forget that it was Hillary Clinton and John Podesta who not only appeased the Russians but openly collaborated with them.
It is time for the Republicans to govern. Obama is history and the Democrats would be on the verge of irrelevancy if the Republicans would stop throwing them a lifeline at every opportunity.
Trump made an excellent choice in appointing a grown-up like John Kelly as his new chief of staff. It is not so easy to make a similar assessment of Scarmucci, who, for all his millions, doesn’t seem to have the vaguest comprehension of how to conduct communications.
Kellyanne Conway should have been given director of communications position from the beginning of he administration. She ran a campaign that was all about good messaging and that is precisely what the Trump administration needs most of all right now.