The continuing public back-and-forth (not so much a debate) over former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s decision to use a private email server during her time at Foggy Bottom has led to a host of recommendations over how to manage what has become a crisis for her impending Presidential re-run.
Whether it is a crisis given the field of likely candidates is better assessed by the political pundits. What none have authenticated is how best to deal with (read: address and get passed) the revelations. A recent post by Politico senior media writer Jack Shafer highlights the disconnect.
He credited her for choosing her words well when meeting with the media on March 10 — juxtsposing the phrase “not saved” with the word “deleted” as evidence of sobriety. Despite the ultimate success or failure of such rebranding, he wrote, “Still, isn’t changing the subject what crisis management is all about?” In the era of social media, crowdsourced fact-checking and instantaneous, global reach of criticism, well-founded or not, misdirection is a bad route to take.
Even in a more controllable environment, it lasts only about as long as Champagne bubbles. Not nearly long enough to run and win a Presidential campaign.
When there was good advice, like that from USA Today’s media columnist, Rem Rieder, it dealt more with atmospherics than the substance of the problem. In his column the day after Secretary Clinton met with reporters at the UN, he noted that she “put on a clinic on how not to defuse a crisis.” Then he put his finger on her once-and-future problem: “Clinton seemed imperial, rigid, above it all – and too clever by half. As the ordeal dragged on, her body language made clear she’d rather be anywhere else in the world rather than batting down these questions from these wretched reporters.”
A crisis is created by some mis-deed, it is fueled by some mis-step, it is extended by mis-trust and it is dealt with not by waiting it out but by giving the public and the media insight and answers that put those deeds in context. This was the error of Secretary Clinton’s press conference. There were things to say other than, to paraphrase, “it all depends on what the definition of email is.”
One such bit came a day later in an analysis on quite-reputable technology website, Mashable. The site’s tech editor noted, “Prior to 2013, though, there was no standard way to secure a BlackBerry like Clinton’s with two email accounts, at least not without giving the IT person in charge complete control over all the data on the phone, work and personal. To fulfill the criteria that Clinton demanded — secure email that’s not sitting on a cloud service, plus a single-BlackBerry solution — she had just one option: Set up her own email server.”
The end of this crisis will most likely be the emergence of another — her’s or that of some other high-profile political figure with Presidential aspirations. Too bad, too, as she had the chance to lay out her thinking in a way that could have earned her more than chance support.
