If you have seen this video, you are probably deeply interested in the inside baseball of Canadian politics, or are connected via social media with someone who is and only clicked out of curiosity. This will be a column for those inside baseball commentators. If you're not one, now might be a good time to find something else to read. I won't be offended.
The video shows Hamish Marshall, campaign manager and best pal of Conservative leader Andrew Scheer, apparently on the way out of the Ottawa International Airport, when he is approached by a CBC reporter wanting to know what he expects of the first CPC caucus meeting since the election. What follows is the most awkward exchange a man and a woman have ever had with their clothes on.
MARSHALL: Uh, what?
REPORTER: In terms of caucus meeting, what kind of message is Mr. Scheer gonna deliver?
MARSHALL: I'm just here to meet with some people.
REPORTER: Will you be taking part in caucus at all?
MARSHALL: I'm not sure how that's any of your business.
REPORTER: Well, I'm just curious . . . um, is, uh, does Mr. Scheer have any sort of message he hopes to deliver to caucus to shore up support?
MARSHALL: You'll have to ask Mr. Scheer that.
According to his LinkedIn profile, Marshall has been involved in federal politics since 2002. The better part of this period in his life has been spent working for a Conservative Party that emphasized and centralized message discipline to an insane degree. As one of the party's most central figures, he should be able to recite leader-approved boilerplate in his sleep. Since he has visibly just disembarked a plane, this may be as close to "his sleep" as most of us will ever get.
We all have off days. But amid open criticisms, rumours of leadership challenges, and reports of worst of all less-than-warm greetings at the Albany Club, this is the worst possible time for Marshall, least of all Scheer, to give anyone the impression that he's just not ready. If his services are pegged as a bad investment in the eyes of caucus, it may take him many years of rebuilding relationships and wallowing as a public affairs consultant to change their minds. Not a terrible back-up. But not a great one, either.
For the time being, Marshall and Scheer's other senior staffers chief of staff Marc-André Leclerc, principal secretary Kenzie Potter, and communications director Brock Harrison are just as in crisis mode as the leader they serve. That means they may need a brief refresher in crisis communications. You may think of media training as something only for people who want to be and remain the story. In this case, training is necessary to help them avoid becoming the story, as all political staffers should commit to doing.
First: Whether the public knows or cares about moments like this is immaterial. The public isn't the primary audience right now. Your primary audience is the people within the party who may decide at any moment that you're better off without it. Your secondary audience is political journalists, who love stumbling into clips like this and will try to trip you up again so they can get more. For both, your task is to give them nothing.
Second: Let's define "nothing." Nothing comes in two forms: walking away with a "no comment" tossed over your shoulder, or a rehearsed statement so boring and predictable and meaningless that it might as well be no comment. Either would have worked for Marshall. The first is preferable if you're in a place like baggage claim, where nobody ever feels like talking.
Third: Stay off Twitter as possible. You could take Potter and Leclerc's approach of posting and sharing nothing but the good news. You could take Marshall's approach of not even having a Twitter account. Harrison's approach of piling on the opposing party and saying nothing about his own office's mess is a bit riskier, but still sound if he sticks to it. Whichever of these you choose, do not be Gerald Butts.
Fourth: Unless it involves your sex life or your mother's glue-sniffing problem, never, ever, ever say MYOB to a journalist. Your work is their business, and you do yourself no favours pretending otherwise. Save the complaints about The Media for the Albany Club. If anyone invites you to their table, that is.
Internal relations are a separate matter, and a bigger one at that. But your chances of patching those up will improve if you don't turn your external self into a clip of the day.
Photo Credit: Twitter
Written by Jess Morgan
