President Obama’s decision to release his long-form birth certificate illustrates a difficult PR and Communications challenge, and it will be interesting to see if the conspiracy theories (I guess I'm showing my personal bias here) about the President’s birth will disappear or continue unabated.
The challenge is this: when you are in a crisis communications situation (and let’s face it, every day is a crisis communications scenario at the White House, no matter who is president), is it better to stay focused solely on your message(s), while ignoring the opposition, or is it better to engage directly in what the opposition is saying? When we counsel clients on crisis communications, we tend to advise that one can only control one’s own messages. You can’t control what the other guy (or the news media) is going to say, and it’s best not to get caught up in the opposition’s game by responding to every charge or allegation. Develop your messages and stick with them (assuming they are working for you).
This seems to have been the Obama strategy. The White House routinely sought to downplay the birth certificate issue, pointing to the official response from Hawaii as sufficient. Unfortunately, questions about Obama’s birth have not gone away, and in fact have even increased, as evidenced by the attention generated by PT Barn—I mean, Donald Trump. Surveys indicate that a majority of Republicans do not believe Obama was born in the US.
And so releasing the long-form certificate is a calculated risk. To Obama’s benefit, it might put the issue to rest for most reasonable people, and I’m not sure what more information he could provide. On the other hand, there are still many Americans who believe the moon landing was phony and that the bodies of space aliens are stashed in New Mexico. The crackpots and conspiracy theorists will likely never be satisfied, and in the Internet age, every crackpot and conspiracy theorist has a worldwide stage. And some will argue that Obama’s response simply empowers the fringe element. From a Communications perspective, it’s a judgment call. If the issue goes away, Obama is a genius. If not…
In the meantime, since Americans seem to be obsessed with documenting the authenticity of things, can we get a statement from Donald Trump’s barber? Because I’m pretty sure there’s a cover-up involved there.
