A brief live-stream commentary by TJ Walker reacting to Congressman Anthony Weiner's resignation following a sexting scandal. Walker, a crisis-communications consultant, argues Weiner had limited options (immediate resignation or full disclosure and resignation), criticizes his handling as worst-case, and offers blunt lessons about honesty and immediate accountability during scandals.
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Well, surprise, surprise, Congressman Anthony Weiner is in fact resigning, something most of us predicted a long time ago and everyone's been urging him to do. Begs the question, if we could go back in time, is there any way he could have gotten himself out of this jam? Now my profession is helping people communicate during a crisis. And while I like to think, and a lot of people like to think you can spin your way out of anything, the truth is you can't always. I don't think he could have spun his way out of this jam. He really had two choices. Number one, he could have just resigned immediately and sort of like what Congressman Chris Lee did earlier this year, the Republican from upstate New York who was caught sending pictures of himself half naked and lying to women saying he was single. He second, he found that out, he knew, hey, the jig is up. He resigned within a couple of hours. Now no one ever has heard of him again and he didn't have this constant barrage of humiliation. So Anthony Weiner could have done that. The other thing he could have done is held a press conference immediately, put everything out there, apologized, said he was completely wrong. In this case, I don't think that would have saved him because there would have been so many humiliating photos that he just couldn't survive. But if he put it all out there and then resigned, he at least would have stopped the negativity. As it is now it's going on three weeks and more people have seen this man's naked private parts than probably the top 100 porn stars in the history of movie making. I just don't see how you ever recover from that level of humiliation. I don't see who gives him a job now. He's hard working his bright, he'll do something presumably beyond ditch digging his own. But he, wow, he sure did screw this up and make every single wrong step he could have made the worst possible way, every step of the way. What are the real lessons here? Well, number one, don't tweet naked pictures of yourself. Number two, if you're caught, you can't lie about it when you know it's virtually impossible for you not to get caught. Number three, when it does happen like that, you've got to simply own up to your responsibilities and resign. Leave some shred of dignity for yourself and your family. Anthony Wiener, it's hard to imagine how anyone could have done a worse job at every step of this crisis than you. Now TV pundits, comedians are going to miss you a lot. As far as everyone else, good riddance I'm TJ Walker.
