Wednesday, February 13, 2008

Rocket, Rocket, Rocket

From a pure public relations standpoint (which of course, is my chosen profession), I have never seen worse decision making than what has transpired the past few weeks with Roger Clemens. I don't even know where to begin: it seems to be as if he's being less than truthful (an understatement to say the least), his responses to questioning have been ill thought and his logic has been spurious at best. Long story short, I really don't understand what he was thinking. This was never about the court of law (though it may be soon if he is caught lying to Congress) but rather the court of public opinion. And he has unquestionably lost that battle. This guy McNamee, while certainly no angel, really has no reason to lie. In short, Clemens should have taken a page from his friend Andy Pettite's book and made an attempt to mitigate the damage as early in the process as possible. Here is what he should have done, in order: admitted complicity, apologized profusely, renounced his actions, done a mini contrition tour and then keep a very low profile for at least three to six months. He's chosen none of these paths through either obstinancy or poor counsel and the cold hard truth is that he's lost the one thing that I suspect means most to him: his integrity.

1 comment:

Michael said...

I think your PR counsel is spot on. There are several issues that got in Clemens way. 1) He's from Texas and he hired lawyers from Texas. Not to stereotype but it seems that the only way they know how to do anything is through brute force (a la a certain president). 2) They thought that they could steal a page from the OJ Simpson defense but they forgot that he was tried in a court of law and Clemens, thus far, has only been tried in the court of public opinion (which OJ lost also). 3) He and his counsel totally misjudged the American public's willingness to suspend disbelief in support of an icon. 4) He relied on lawyers for PR counsel. That in itself is a really stupid decision that forces one to question his intelligence.

I was always a fan of Clemens but I'll never forget when he threw the broken bat at Mike Piazza. That, my friend, was 'roid rage.