A Handy Dandy List
I get it that it's difficult, when you're in the final stretch, to suddenly pull up and step aside and let the professionals do their job. I understand that. But surely Mitt Romney has ONE person on his campaign staff who understands disaster ettiquette– or at least how to convincingly fake basic human decency?
Apparently not. So here is a handy dandy little list I've made up for future candidates on what to do- and NOT to do, when disaster strikes the nation in the middle fo your campaign. I am not making this stuff up!
DO: Express your heart-felt sympathies to the people affected by the disaster.
DO: Let your supporters know what they can do to help: distribute contact info for the Red Cross and other organizations that will be stepping in.
DO: donate generously yourself.
As far as I know, candidate Romney sucessfully completed these tasks. It's after this point where it all went horribly, disgustingly, wrong.
DON'T: stage an even where you ask supporters to collect supplies for the Red Cross that the Red Cross does not want and normally refuses to take.
DON'T: pressure the Red Cross into diverting workers from other tasks to process your donations (which they ask people not to give for precisely this reason.)
DON'T: send your staff out the night before to blow $5000 on canned soup and granola bars, etc so the donation tables won't look empty for the cameras… donations that, again the Red Cross asks over and over that people not give them.
DON'T: make your supporters stand in line holding their supplies for up to 45 minutes, waiting until the candidate- and the cameras!- arrive to be allowed to put them down.
DON'T: insist that people who came without donations take something from the pile your staff set up so that they can fake donate it to the smiling candidate in front at the cameras.
DON'T: have your running mate tell volunteers to stop loading the truck so quickly, so there will still be stuff to do when he shows up with… the cameras.
DON'T: Only deliver your supplies to states which are predicted to give you their electoral college votes. You're running to be the president of everybody, not just the Republicans.
DON'T: ignore 14 questions about your stated policy plans to leave future disaster victims out in the cold when you have known for at least 4 days that you would be asked this question.
DON'T: have a running mate on record saying that disaster money should not be given out unless you cut the same amount of money from other programs- like education, food stamps, etc…. (pretty much any program that helps the 47%) but never, ever from defense.
DON'T: send out on the campaign trail the guy who just said that in deference to the ongoing disaster, he would generously give $5 million to a charity…. if the president released his college transcripts by Thursday.
DON'T: send another surrogate out to a "Disaster Relief" event and have him bitch to the crowd that the president, who is currently grappling with the disaster, is "grossly incompetent". I know it's difficult to accept, but some things just really aren't about you.
No, really. Unless your house- your only house, just got washed away, this thing is NOT about you.
DO: step back for a day and just shut the Fuck Up!
Tracy Meisky is a poet, writer, singer, songwriter and all-around boat rocker from way back. Feel free to look around, but if you break it, you bought it.