The Hill News

As a professional crisis manager, I believe there are certain immutable rules that simply cannot be broken. The most basic is a lesson learned during my White House service during the Clinton administration: “Tell it all, tell it early, tell it yourself.”

This rule is violated over and over again: by former South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford (R), by former Sen. John Edwards (D-N.C.), by the most famous, worst crisis manager of all, Richard Nixon.

Obviously, Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-N.Y.) violated this rule last week. He chose to lie and dissemble, for some reason believing that he could get away with it.

This strategy simply cannot work, especially in the age of the Internet. A 200-year-old example charts a better course: being proactive and pre-emptive in getting all the bad news out yourself.

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