President Obama is certainly going to get more than a taste of Budweiser this afternoon. As a matter of fact, I think he and his advisors are getting a bad taste of how misjudgments in the communication process quickly allow a recession weary media to drink in an episode that has all the popularity once enjoyed by Cheers, but none of the levity.

 How far and how fast this earnest President has come! He’s gone from a media darling and star orator to a lightening rod of controversy for the brewing industry, The Christian Temperance Union, Alcoholics Anonymous, various Police Unions, Harvard, and the black caucus, among others. And all of this for not staying on message on one question in an otherwise perfectly choreographed news conference.

 Being a “Monday morning quarterback” on communications issues gone awry is easy. Being thorough enough to anticipate infrequently asked questions is very difficult, but necessary when working for arguably one of the most important people in the world. Unfortunately, the follow on management of what transpired leaves vast room for improvement.

 First there is the issue of beer and healthcare, which normally don’t mix. Taking a stab at being a nice guy by offering your neighbors the opportunity to sit down and talk things over a “cold one” was used with great success by my father in the 1950s. But he wasn’t President. And he wasn’t pushing a major healthcare initiative that was already losing steam in Congress and becoming less popular with the people. Frankly, the solution to the mini-crisis has become almost worse than the initial issue. The opportunistic stakeholders in the issue at hand seem to be multiplying exponentially as they seek to tag onto the reach and frequency afforded by Presidential coverage. This non-issue has developed a life of its own that may have legs even beyond the economic recovery if things keep going the way they have.

 Wouldn’t a simple meeting between the disputing parties have sufficed? Wasn’t there once again message slippage without much forethought? This afternoon’s meeting between an academic scholar, career police officer and the most powerful chief executive in the world to mend fences didn’t have to include beverages that don’t align with a major health care initiative. But I would suppose that if tea, or lemonade, or iced coffee were being served, their respective interest groups would have brewed, or mixed up, initiatives to tout their own agendas. Such is the power of the Presidency.

 Mistakes and snafus occur in even the most carefully drawn out public relations initiatives. But they can be minimized by careful planning, staying on message, and using plain old common sense as issues unfold. The latter is a euphemism for maintaining enough perspective of the broader situation to accomplish the objectives the initiative originally set out to do.

 I hope the Budweiser horses don’t make an unscheduled appearance near a certain house on Pennsylvania Avenue this afternoon, or that there aren’t too many picketers for various causes, or too many network interviews with executives of those causes, or too many book deals offered, or ………

 Edmund R. Belak, Jr.

Head of Corporate Communications and

Investor Relations

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