Obama Speech Scandal

The 2008 Presidential Campaign has a lot of people talking. The real battle and much of the spotlight has been turned on to the Democratic race between Barack Obama Senator form Illinois and Hillary Clinton Senator from New York. This week CNN.com reported that Senator Clinton's camp accused Barack Obama for borrowing lines from the speech of Governor Deval Patrick, a friend of Obama's. The Clinton campaign the used the PR tactic of leaking a video comparing Obama's speech with Patrick's speech to youtube for the public to see. Now more than ever it is vital to have a quick and effective crisis management on your campaign team to tame scandals like this quickly before it can seriously injure a campaign.

In a great crisis management move Obama's camp first addressed the statements, then made sure all parties involved were on the same team and the pointed out Clinton had borrowed lines as well, in an attempt to discredit her. Obama addressed the accusations by stating "I've written two books, wrote most of my speeches. So I think putting aside the question ... in terms of whether my words are my own, I think that would be carrying it too far." His camp admitted that there might be some borrowed words between the two men because they share ideas with each other and are friends. The Obama campagin made sure all parties were on the same page and had Patrick issued a statement to the media stating that "Senator Obama and I are long-time friends and allies. We often share ideas about politics, policy and language." The Obama campaign even went so far as to check statements made by David Axelrod, who was an advisor for both Obama's Senate campaign and for Patrick's gubernatorial run, talk about getting all your people on the same page. The Obama camp then stated that Clinton had borrowed lines from some of Obama's speeches as well. This was a great reaction by his team. They addressed the situation before it could really harm the race. In fact today he won Wisconsin today, his ninth straight win in a row.