“Politics is show business for ugly people,” said (according to some) Paul Begala, noted aide to some of the most successful Democratic politicians of the 1990s. A major part of the modern business of political campaigns is to hide a great deal of that ugliness from voters. Politicians on the national level today face a media environment in which their slightest misstep or indiscretion is all but certain to be captured and exposed to a worldwide audience. Given that elections in the US rarely involve disputes over policy, it isn't surprising that the struggle over political power is often covered in a superficial atmosphere of gossip and celebrity. This is why a tight, unflinching discipline over message is absolutely critical to successful campaigns. Surely a lesson that the now thoroughly disgraced Anthony Weiner would've done well to consider.
In many ways, Anthony Weiner was the worst thing that could have happened to a communications professional. Much of the energy he brought to his job as a New York congressman was the result of his effusive personality and impressive personal force. Unfortunately, the flipside of that coin is often an unpredictable, risk-prone personality that will be prone to wholly unnecessary gambling for no discernible advantage. The documented actions of other politicians, Bill Clinton in particular, come to mind here as the sort of wild, risky behavior that can sink politicians' careers like a leaky boat.
It would seem that fixing the cardinal flaw in the personalities of powerful politicians is out of the question for now. The very force that drives them to seek public office seems to be the same force that drives them to tweet pictures of their penises to Twitter followers. So, if the compulsive and reckless private behavior of some politicians can't be stopped, can it at least be managed? The key seems to be in the response.
In June 2008, then-congressman Weiner was identified by the newspaper Roll Call as one of the worst offenders in Congress for having unpaid parking tickets. Weiner successfully managed the scandal, first by paying the approximately $2,000 in unpaid fines, and then by diverting the issue to what he claimed was the $18,000,000 in unpaid parking tickets owed to the city of New York by UN delegates who abused their diplomatic immunity. As an encore, in that same month he championed the issue of streamlining the granting of O-visas to encourage ambitious young women to come to New York and try a career in modeling. The cumulative effect of these actions was to take the heat off Weiner by eliminating the underlying problem, blaming unsympathetic foreigners, and then offering the media a borderline salacious news item about importing beautiful women. The strategy worked brilliantly in 2008 and might work for him again.
Unfortunately, Weiner's masterful handling of the parking ticket fracas failed him utterly when, three years later, he was tarred in the press as a borderline sex offender. This time, the salacious copy had his name all over it, and there would be no diversion. Weiner's unfortunate insistence on managing his own social media—possibly a result of his exceptionally high staff turnover—left him without any filter that would otherwise have stopped him before he did something disastrous. It even left him without a scapegoat he could blame (let’s say for tweeting the “wrong” picture), a favorite trick of politicians since Rome.
The story ends in tears and collapsing scenery. Weiner resigned his seat in Congress in 2011. His reputation as a serious political player earned him another chance when he declared for the New York City mayoral race in 2013; a race that came to grief when yet more pictures surfaced, dating from April 2013. Weiner would earn the distinction of losing his bid for mayor by one of the worst margins ever suffered by a Democrat in New York—a lesson to aspiring politicians to mind the public image.
(Photo courtesy of freedigitalphotos.net)
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