Kim Leslie’s PR Blog

The White House, a place that should be a pinnacle of good PR, could have responded better after Michaele and Tareq Salahi crashed Obama’s first state dinner party. No one noticed the couple was out of place as they went through security and posed for pictures with the president.

The couple was being considered for the upcoming reality show Real Housewives of DC and may have attended the dinner as a publicity stunt. Records show that they were not invited and not on the guest list.

So how did they get into the dinner? The couple did not have an invitation to present at the gate, and claimed it was in their car. Yet, the Secret Service let them through. The Secret Service has publicly apologized, but they are not the only ones at fault.

White House Social Secretary Desiree Rogers should be taking the fall for this mess. Rogers was supposed to be checking guests in, but put herself on the guest list, instead of the staff list. She refuses to testify, and stated that it was not her fault, since none of her staff were even there at the doors!

The White House should be presenting a united front and message, with one spokesperson citing all of the parties who are at fault. No one should be letting Rogers speak, and a good explanation for exactly why this happened and who was there to let the couple in should be presented to the public.

In addition, the White House keeps focusing on the fact that the couple posed no threat to Obama as they went through the same security screening as all of the other guests. That’s great, but everyone is still asking why the couple made it inside the White House in the first place.

For these reasons, the White House practiced bad PR in this situation. Next time, using PR tactics such as presenting one message, one statement of what occurred, and having one spokesperson would be more effective.