JEB Bush and Media Training
Stephen Parr
I believe strongly in learning from the mistakes of others. Here's a great opportunity to do just that.
Republican Presidential Candidate, JEB Bush was being interviewed on CNN and was being asked some uncomfortable questions about whether or not he would support Donald Trump. Now, Gov. Bush has obviously received media training on how to handle difficult questions from the press. That's good and important for any politician. The bad part is JEB has only learned the mechanics of dealing with the media and not the deeper reasons behind his media training.
After repeated questions about whether he would support Donald Trump over Hillary Clinton should Trump earn the GOP nomination, Bush said, "I've learned not to answer questions. That's one of the things you do now in political discourse. You answer what you want to say." OK, so that is certainly part of media training, but you don't tell that to the media! You are essentially saying live on national television, "I've been trained to be deceptive to the American public."
A better answer would have been, "I didn't answer your question because I don't think it's relevant. I don't expect Donald Trump to be our nominee because I plan to earn the votes of Republicans across the country." He also could have used the standard, "I don't want to answer hypothetical questions." Both of those would have been much better messages for the audience while still avoiding either throwing support behind Donald Trump or worse, behind Hillary Clinton.
The key to managing your media appearances well is to skillfully return the conversation to the issues you want to talk about. But, that has to be done in an easy, comfortable, and confident manner. Just like any sport or competition, you don't ever want to tell the other side what your strategy is. You don't see quarterbacks yelling out post patterns for the defense to hear. Chess masters don't write down their next 7 moves on a napkin. Politicians shouldn't reveal their interview tactics with the interviewer during the interview either.
CNN cut a clip of that interview and posted it to Twitter. From there, it got picked up by The Daily Caller. Fortunately for Gov. Bush, it didn't make the front page of Drudge and that specific clip is not in CNN's video rotation. This gaff could have been a lot worse if more media outlets had picked it up.
It takes lots of work to be able to appear effortless. Your media training shouldn't be just about what to say, but about how to say it and why it needs to be said in that way. In order to be successful in a difficult interview, you need to be confident that you can comfortably control the message regardless the line of questioning. Until you have that confidence, you need more practice.