Terry McMahon's Awesome Blog

Thanks to Laura for the photo. I'm sorry, that's just funny.

So George Pataki had a meeting with close associates last night to tell them he's not running for a fourth term as New York governor. While I think Eliot Spitzer is New York's next governor whether Pataki ran or not, a small bit of the New York Times story jumped out at me:

But the meeting at the governor's mansion, a hastily arranged affair that had supporters from across the state scurrying to attend, was almost more like a family reunion than a political gathering, according to someone who was there who spoke on the condition of anonymity so as not to upstage the governor's planned announcement on Wednesday.

Oh, thank goodness. If it weren't for that non-upstaging anonymity, this would have been all over the New York Times this morning. Such a boneheaded move (assuming it wasn't intentional) reminds me of some of the basic rules of press interaction I learned last year while I was press secretarying. There's no reason to think you'll never talk to a reporter over the course of your life (some inexplicably anti-Potterites have already), so I'll repeat some of the lessons I learned:

• If you're never going to talk to this reporter again (as was potentially the case with here) you can't trust them for anything. This is just common sense. You can tell them it's off the record, and they might keep it off the record, but there's nothing really stopping them from screwing you over. When you're talking to a reporter you won't be working with in the future, it's best not to say anything you don't want to see in print. Wait, let me make that stronger: think of what you want to see in print, and only say that.
  
• A corollary: when you're going to be working with a reporter on an ongoing basis, you have a little more leeway. You're still putting your fate in someone else's hands though, so my off-the-record remarks are usually just inside-baseball versions of whatever I was saying before. I do this for two reasons: one, if I contradict my on-the-record remarks, then I'm undercutting my credibility; and two, if there's stuff I just desperately want to level with someone on, I can call up a friend. Reporters are not your friends. (Hmmm... maybe that should be its own remark.)
  
• Specify "off the record" before you make your remarks, not after. This is the most important thing I can tell someone before they start talking to the press. Reporters understand the limitations of their sources and, in my experience, have been totally cool with me, as long as I treat them right. That means I interrupt an on-the-record conversation to say, "can we go off the record here?" and they say yes, we go there, and then I say, "okay, now back on the record..." and go from there. I haven't been screwed yet, but that's because I haven't said something I shouldn't and immediately said, "oh, wait, that was off the record" right when the reporter's thinking, "great, I've got a quote."
  
• Don't be afraid of a dull conversation. Reporters are well practiced in endearing themselves to sources. When I was a deputy press secretary on a campaign in New Hampshire, I was introduced to one of the best reporters in the state, who told me to call him so we could go out to dinner. Much as I would have liked to believe he saw greatness in my eyes, he was just looking for another source. Don't fall for people who suck up to you: just stay on message. With experience it's possible to do this in a natural way, saying stuff like, "look, I know it's not exciting, but that's really true, we're still counting checks," and my personal favorite, "oh, we'll definitely let you know when we have a comment on that."
  
• Reporters are not your friends. You can't ever assume the reporter wants you either happy or employed, no matter how nice they seem or even if they say they're "on your side." So even if you go off the record, a casual remark about how your opponent drinks and drives is not going into a vault by any stretch of the imagination. Reporters have different ideas of what "off the record" really means: can they talk about it with their friends at the bar that night? Can they write that "insiders say" what you just told them not to repeat? Once last year I asked a questioning journalist if the other campaign had already made their remarks. The reporter told me, oh, they said x, y and z, but "off the record they told me..." I didn't go off the record with that reporter after that.

I have made mistakes: once I made a remark that I assumed was true, and the reporter asked me my source. Since he was the prime reporter for that project, he said he was doing that research anyway and he'd modify my quote based on what he found out. That was a really, really lucky break for me that I didn't quite deserve, but it worked out because the reporter was a pretty nice guy and understood that he would need me as a source in the future. So while this might look complicated (I certainly didn't envision this long a remark), it's not that hard: think of your message beforehand, keep repeating it in as many ways as you can, don't get off it, and if you're that desperate to tell someone that juicy inside story off the record, call up your friends from college. (Or start a blog and talk about it the following year.) In other words, if you don't want to upstage a public announcement by talking about a private one, keep your damn mouth shut.

So I hope this is helpful, or at least interesting. I know I'm not the world's greatest authority on press relations, given the stunning 36% of the vote we pulled in my only tenure as press secretary. Still, I never screwed up that badly in public, so I have relevant experience with the deer-in-the-headlights phase of talking to the press. Actually, that reminds me, last rule: if you get a call that you have absolutely no idea how to handle, it's easy. Say, "ooh, that's a good question, let me look it up and call you back," then email your consultants and say, "what the fuck do I do?" Works like a charm.