When perceptions cannot be managed …

Little of what is in the news is real news. Most of it are staged events and stage management of actual events. Those who present us with news on TV and in newspapers have many options before them, and decide to focus on some events and ignore the vast majority. That has to be, as media is small and the world is big.

But there are real events that cannot be ignored. There are people in business and government whose job is to monitor real events, and to the degree possible, manage perceptions of those events. When perceptions cannot be managed, they go into “damage control” mode, and if they cannot control damage, the event is said to be “out of hand.”

Out-of-hand events have the power to change public perceptions. With the oil spill in the Gulf, damage control has been, at best, only marginally effective. The Obama people are in the pocket of the oil industry, just as the Bush people before them. Consequently, they are mere spectators. Yet they must appear to be in charge. That calls for on-scene photos, staged confrontations, angry press conferences with oily sand as a backdrop. A staged hug with a fisherman’s wife would be good, as would a little girl and an oily turtle. Little girls really work well.

The best that they have done to date is this:

Is that the best they can do? Together with the occasional press report that Obama is “outraged!” his people appear to be rank amateurs.

This could be his Katrina – a PR nightmare. The underlying event is a large national catastrophe, but all of that aside, he has to appear tough and in charge. Fortunately for him, he was not off celebrating someone’s birthday. Still, his people have failed him miserably.

Maybe it is time for a staged distraction event. When 400 marines were killed in Lebanon, Reagan’s people invaded Granada. But the Gulf spill is so big that only a war or new terrorist attack could divert attention. But those things take time – that is, the Pentagon is always ready to go to war anywhere, but the public has to be prepped, and summer is the worst time to launch an advertising campaign.

It’s a perfect storm for Obama – a large and photo-friendly event that cannot be contained … in summer. This is his moment. Either he appears to take charge, or he appears not to be in charge. The cameras wait.

The oil industry in an ongoing development program of deep-water drilling off our coasts. The activity has been mostly unregulated. It was officially sanctioned by the Bush people, and later the Obama people carried on as if the election had changed nothing. Obama himself spread the illusion that he opposed such activity during the campaign, but that was just for perception sake.

That program will be set back a few years. That’s the worst that will happen to the oil industry. British Petroleum’s financial liabilities are limited by law. So is just a matter of riding out the storm before they go back to business as usual.

For the Obama Administration? They might be wishing for a terrorist attack. They are pretty much tapped out on wars at this time.