If you’re an aspiring presidential candidate, says professional crisis manager Eric Dezenhall, right now is “a great time to take a pratfall because it’s so far away from anything major.”
That’s a good thing because so many of the candidates’ feet have been sliding out from under them.
The first six weeks of 2015 have featured mangled messages, snappishness, a bad hire and other flubs from the Republicans who would be president.
It’s pretty much to be expected in the earliest stages of a campaign with just short of a gazillion potential candidates who haven’t done this before.
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For now, Democrats can largely sit back and enjoy the GOP clatter because expected candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton has the experience of the 2008 Democratic primaries on her resume and is expected to face little primary opposition this time.
But Fleischer said even Clinton will have an adjustment to make if she jumps back into the presidential mosh pit after eight years of “the paid speaker’s life, which is scrutiny-free, and the charmed life of a secretary of state, where you’re not covered in the same way you are in political campaigns.”
Dezenhall said one skill that candidates on both sides will need to learn early on is damage control — both how to respond and what safely can be ignored — because errors are inevitable.
“Politics used to be about where you stood,” he said. “Now, it’s about what you stepped in.”
