Crisis Management??

Two weeks ago, the news was that Vice President Harris had brought in a crisis managemet team to help her public image.

LORRAINE VOLES was one of two hires, along with former Obama speechwriter ADAM FRANKEL, reported by both the Washington Post and CNN over the weekend. Both worked for the vice president during the transition, and “offered to be of assistance,” an official from the White House said. A Harris aide said Voles and Frankel began their new roles in August.

Although the White House official didn’t use the word “crisis,” Voles is well known as a public relations and crisis communications expert. She most recently led crisis communications at George Washington University and at Fannie Mae, after serving as a strategist and adviser to HILLARY CLINTON’s 2006 Senate reelection race and 2008 presidential bid. In the late ‘90s, she helped AL GORE craft his message as vice president. Now she’ll help Harris with long-term planning, her policy agenda and with “organizational development” and strategic communications, according to a White House official.

But over the weekend, her bizarre performance in a scripted video feature with child actors can only have made the crisis worse.

The first installment of Vice President Kamala Harris’s YouTube Originals space series featured child actors who auditioned for their roles in the project.

Trevor Bernardino, a 13-year-old actor from Carmel, California, and one of five teenagers featured in the video, was asked to submit a monologue discussing something he is passionate about and three questions for a world leader, according to an interview with KSBW TV. Trevor then interviewed with the production director.

. . . “It was pitched to my son and us as a pilot,” [the actor's father] said, but whether it continues will “depend on the reaction and what the producers want to do — our hope is that it gets picked up.”

. . . The video, which by Monday had garnered some 114,000 views on YouTube, as well as 1,900 likes and 2,800 dislikes, was shared online by the vice president’s aides and supporters. A trailer for the show drew 48 likes and 136 dislikes. Comments on both videos have been disabled.

. . . In one segment, Harris expounds on the virtues of space exploration and scientific discovery.

. . . Paired with the caption, “Me when I miscalculate a micro dose and start fully tripping midday,” the clip has been viewed close to a million times.

Well, it doesn't inspire confidence that Ms Voles's prior clients include Hillary Clinton and Al Gore, two people who, the more we saw of them, the less we liked them. Gore in particular needed a competent crisis manager after the "release my second chakra" episode, whether he had one on the payroll or not. He certainly could have afforded one. But this goes to the question of judgment. As the massage story developed in his case, it appears that he had a habit of bringing massage therapists into his room in high class hotels and propositioning them for sex acts.

There's not much a crisis manager can do when you keep creating new crises for yourself. The same applies to Vice President Harris. Her problem is that she keeps cackling in inappropriate situations, giving herself the appearance of being unserious and disengaged. A real crisis manager would have to sit her down and and tell her to start acting like a senior politician if she wanted people to think of her as one. Instead, she comes off as if she's tripping. (I definitely don't rule it out that she is.)

But if the producers involved with that video anticipated what the reaction would be, why didn't her handlers simply insist it not be released? What on earth is she paying Ms Voles for she didn't axe that whole project? I would guess that only a crisis manager who badly needed the work would take that job.