Field Notes Inside an Integrated Communications Agency

John McCain’s presidential campaign was a study in effective crisis management last week.  On Monday, the New York Times and the Washington Post published stories alleging that McCain, who had nurtured the reputation as an independent political maverick, did senatorial favors for a lobbyist with whom his staff thought he might be having a romantic relationship.  
 
If you have trouble following the garbled syntax of the previous sentence, you see why McCain was able to effectively deny the charges.
 
Here’s what McCain did right:
He denied the charge at 9 a.m. the morning the stories were published.  He responded firmly and quickly.
He got his wife – frozen smile and all – to knock down the stories, too.
He counter-attacked the Post and the Times for waging liberal jihad against him.
He enrolled other conservatives who were lukewarm toward his candidacy but unstinting in their suspicion of mainstream media.
 
More important, behind the scenes, McCain loyalists were knocking down the story with such ferocity that by Sunday, six days later, even the Times’ ombudsman wrote that the newspaper should not have published the charge that staff were concerned about the alleged romantic relationship.  The Times and the Post had NO hard evidence of a romantic relationship.  Only one McCain source admitted on the record that the staff was “concerned” about the possibility of a romantic relationship.  That further endeared McCain to conservatives who had been slow to support McCain.
 
We learned in 1992 that voters can overcome their uneasiness about a presidential candidate’s martial fidelity (remember Bill Clinton and Jennifer Flowers?) But they at least expect their candidates to be forceful and unequivocal in their denials.  It endears a candidate to his or her base voters.  And that, more than anything else, is what John McCain needs right now.