Hillary's PR Woes

Public Relations does not just work to mend the images and reputations of troubled celebrities and corporations, but in light of the presidential campaign, lets not forget the politicians!  On the Democratic side, Hillary Clinton clearly seems to be fighting a losing battle against beloved Obama.  Seeing as her dullness and lame jokes can't compare to the charisma of Obama, you might think this is where her PR groupies come in.

However, as PR Week exclaims, her PR team has not been helping to turn the attitudes of the public around.  In fact, their strategy, lately, has revolved around failed tactics that just makes her appear worse to the public eye!  Poor Hillary....  

Recently a photo was leaked to the Drudge Report of Obama wearing a turban (claimed to 

 be traditional African clothing).  This is seen as an attempt by Hillary and her team to spark some sort of anti-muslim/anti-Obama wave amongst the nation.  While you might think Obama would need to pull out some crisis PR moves to handle this, it's actually Hillary that needs the extra help.  Instead of the photo becoming top news, the spotlight is on the suspected attempt by the Clinton campaign to destroy his image.  If this was, in fact, a ploy by the Clinton campaigners, it backfired incredibly.  Obama even managed to get out of the ordeal with not a scra

tch on his image.  Clearly, this is not entirely Hillary's fault.  Although personality plays into it a lot, you would think a team of professional PR people could think of a more effective ploy for the Democratic runner.

Politics drives me crazy, and even though I am not following the campaign trails as I should be, I did see the leaked Obama photo.  If this was in fact the doing of Hillary and her people,  that is just plain sad.  Actually, this is exactly the reason I hate politics.  Improving your own image doesn't mean tearing someone else's down.  Obviously this was not the way for Clinton to win over the public, and I won't be surprised if her campaign suffers even more for it.  Public Relations is based on ethics which is based on honesty and fairness.  Politics clearly lacks the ethics, but the PR people should be working to encourage it.  Instead, it seems as though the PR aspect of the campaign is being turned dirty along with the politics.  This is disappointing, although perhaps it is a good thing that the public sees right through it...

Shockingly, even amongst all the finger pointing and name-calling, Hillary managed to win the Texas Democratic primary.  Although Obama was on a roll, her victories in Ohio and Texas give her no reason to back out of the race.  So it seems that her and her team have more time to develop crowd pleasing PR strategies (that hopefully won't backfire this time).