P.R. Blunders 101: Slate a highly touted Town Hall meeting while abroad to talk to foreignors in their own country — then try to cancel it quietly when it can’t be scripted enough to your satisfaction.
And here, students, is the first reading in your syllabus in this course, from the German newsmagazine Der Spiegel:
The much-touted American-style “town hall” meeting the White House has been planning with “normal Germans” of everyday walks of life will be missing during his visit to the Rhine River hamlet of Mainz this afternoon. A few weeks ago, the Bush administration had declared that the chat — which could have brought together tradesmen, butchers, bank employees, students and all other types to discuss trans-Atlantic relations — would be the cornerstone of President George W. Bush’s brief trip to Germany.
So it was going to be a cornerstone…sort of like JFK’s visit to the Berlin Wall? Fair enough. More:
State Department diplomats said the meeting would help the president get in touch with the people who he most needs to convince of his policies. Bush’s invasion of Iraq and his diplomatic handling of the nuclear dispute with Iran has drawn widespread concern and criticism among the German public. And during a press conference two weeks ago, Bush said Washington is still terribly misunderstood in Europe. All the more reason, it would seem, for him to be pleased about talking to people here.
But on Wednesday, that town hall meeting will be nowhere on the agenda — it’s been cancelled. Neither the White House nor the German Foreign Ministry has offered any official explanation, but Foreign Ministry sources say the town hall meeting has been nixed for scheduling reasons — a typical development for a visit like this with many ideas but very little time. That, at least, is the diplomats’ line. Behind the scenes, there appears to be another explanation: the White House got cold feet. Bush’s strategists felt an uncontrolled encounter with the German public would be too unpredictable.
To avoid that messy scenario, the White House requested that rules similar to those applied during Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice’s visit two weeks ago also be used in Mainz. Before meeting with students at Paris’s Institute of Political Sciences, which preens the country’s elite youth for future roles in government, Rice’s staff insisted on screening and approving any questions to be asked by students. One question rejected was that of Benjamin Barnier, the 24-year-old son of France’s foreign minister, who wanted to ask: “George Bush is not particularly well perceived in the world, particularly in the Middle East. Can you do something to change that?” Instead, the only question of Barnier’s that got approval was the question of whether Iraq’s Shiite Muslim majority might create a theocratic government based on the Iranian model?
The Germans, though, insisted that a free forum should be exactly that. Wolfgang Ischinger, Germany’s Ambassador to the United States, explained to the New York Times last week: “We told them, don’t get upset with us if they ask angry questions.”
In the end, the town hall meeting was never officially dropped from the agenda of the trip — instead it was dealt with in polished diplomatic style — both sides just stopped talking about it.
Very poor politics, indeed. You would think they would have anticipated some resistance from having a free-for-all-discussion. This underlines sloppy staffing on the part of the White House and perhaps some in the State Department. This issue should have been resolved long before a town hall meeting in Germany was being trumpeted as a big event. Pulling back is never pretty.
Of course, the IRONY here is that now it’s American officials who apparently want to avoid rough and tumble debate — the kind for which American democracy is famous. So now the U.S. seems more afraid of democratic debate than the Germans???!
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.