NO SMOOCH FOR ‘THE MOOCH’
Scaramucci’s firing shows communications is not for amateurs. Nor is governing.
Sure, take the flashy flatterer who has been singing the president’s praises on cable news and make him White House communications director, never mind the fact that Anthony Scaramucci has no communications experience. What could go wrong?
How quickly we learned. The lesson was so obvious that by Monday, the former hedge fund manager was fired from the job he had yet to “officially” start.
The disaster during Scaramucci’s first week — a profanity-laced diatribe to a national magazine in which the president’s incoming communications director blasted supposed colleagues and exposed the knife-fight chaos in the White House — tells us something worth remembering: Communications is not for amateurs. Nor is governing.
As a longtime communications director, I find it unfathomable that “The Mooch” would say to anyone what he said about fellow White House officials Reince Priebus and Steve Bannon. That he would spew this to The New
Yorker’s Ryan Lizza without assurances they were off the record is absolutely mind-boggling. BLAMING THE REPORTER How many c-words, f-bombs and personal insults can you cram into one rant? Scaramucci was apparently bent on finding out. Yet when the backlash hit, all he could muster was the lamest, most clichéd excuse in the book: “I made a mistake in trusting in a reporter,” he tweeted. “It won’t happen again.”
The Mooch made far graver mistakes than that, and anyone with a minute of communications experience would not have made them. Did he really think he could make such incendiary, news-relevant comments to a prominent journalist and see none of it published? And if it were not a mistake — Trump reportedly loved the Scaramucci quotes — that itself speaks volumes about how this administration operates and miscalculates. It isn’t much of a surprise that Priebus was the first one who lost his job.
One social media wag joked that Scaramucci was impaired. As Julieanne Smolinski hilariously tweeted, “Who hasn’t done a ton of blow and thought, ‘I should call
The New Yorker RIGHT NOW.’ ” Although probably not cocaine, Scaramucci must have been under the influence of something: probably power, or hubris, or anger, or all three. Not to mention a lack of knowing something that any minimally experienced communications person could have told him: Anything you say to a reporter is fair game, unless he or she has explicitly agreed to go off the record. As shocking as this professional malpractice might be, it’s what you’d expect when you take the aggressively incompetent approach to communications that the president is taking. WHO’S THE ENEMY? The negative news coverage, the lack of pro-Trump puff pieces, the record-low approval ratings — the president seems to blame all these on the “enemy-of-the-people” news media and the failure of his communications team to control the narrative. If only he had someone smart, and tough, and loyal to the president …
Roll your eyes with me now, communications people. Whether the sector is government, or business, or education, how many times have we seen frustrated leaders blame negative coverage on the messengers rather than the substance of what’s reported — substance for which they are responsible?
Not to say communicators don’t possess some ability to influence what is said about their organizations. Indeed, there would be no need for us if that were the case. But the truth remains as it was put to me by a grizzled veteran back when I was a cub reporter: If you’re a public figure and there’s something you don’t want in the newspaper, don’t do it, don’t say it.
Equally tiring is a tendency among some “leaders” to fall for the flatterer. It’s a fool who chooses a sycophant for the job.
But we’re all fools if we expected anything other than Lord of the
Flies from an administration that has both personified and accelerated the increasingly popular delusion that expertise and experience no longer matter. Really, was it such a surprise to see a real estate mogul and reality TV star possessing zero political knowledge try turning communications over to a Wall Street wolf with no relevant experience?
Experience and expertise do count. Professional ethics still matter. With or without The Mooch, the Trump administration will keep demonstrating these truths with each trainwreck day.
A member of USA TODAY’s Board of Contributors, Tom Krattenmaker writes on religion in public life and directs communications at Yale Divinity School. His most recent book is Confessions of a Secular Jesus Follower.