Issue management 101: Douse the issue before it gets out of hand

Fire at the White House is out. Time to go back to the health care debate.

Wow. President Obama just went in front of the Whitehouse Press corps and said he'd erred in his comment on how the Cambridge, Mass. police arrested a prominent African American professor. Immediately after the arrest, Obama had said:

"the Cambridge police acted stupidly in arresting somebody when there was already proof that they were in their own home."

But today, Obama rightly moved to douse the issue, calling the arresting officer directly and saying he'd essentially erred in his comments.

"I unfortunately gave an impression that I was maligning the Cambridge Police Department or Sgt. Crowley specifically," Obama told reporters. "I could have calibrated those words differently, and I told this to Sgt. Crowley."

The fact was the controversy over the arrest and the President's subsequent comments were overtaking the agenda in Washington and distracting media and politicans from debate on the health care legislation in front of Congress. All too often people in this position wait too long to engage with the counterparty in a controversy and this usually just magnifies the issue.

Mark Knoller (@markknoller) from CBS notes that:

In the past, Presidents wait to the very last moment to admit an error in judgment: Clinton-Monica; Reagan/Contras: Ford/Poland.

Obama made the right move by acting quickly. Most politicians aren't this astute. Normally we see officials in trouble bend themselves out of shape to avoid saying they screwed up. It's an all too often occurrence. Outside politics it's an issue you frequently see as well.

The bottom line is people sometimes make mistakes. Your average person understands that. So if you take the initiative and wrest control of the issue by owning up to the blunder, you and your organization will be better off in the end. You might just have to swallow a little pride in the process.

Kidnapped Atlanta Lawyers Freed After Text-Messaging for Help

I know police are all about the facts when they communicate publicly, but geez, this Detective Quinn quoted below could take some lessons in how to better position his track record:

"Police credited the kidnapped men for not panicking during their ordeal.

'Mr. Hoying and Mr. Deganian solved this crime,' Quinn said. 'Without them, we would've had an unsolved mystery. Most of my kidnappings end in death.'"

Not sure how good people in Atlanta are feeling after hearing that...