The Huskies' Hustle vs. Sestak Stall

Today's local paper brings us two examples of public relations strategies in the face of embarrassing crisis. At the University of Connecticut, the men's basketball program takes the hit of multiple primary rules infractions. The Husky athletic department issued a press release, the documents -- quite lightly redacted, BTW -- from the NCAA, and issued video and written statements of the individuals involved. (I might also add, front page of website, not buried, still in the news rotation today.) We can see from the documents pretty clearly what was accused, who did it, and the only mystery is who was the recipient. It is also out there that the recruit was expelled from UConn -- this we get from the media reports. But UConn is out front, and making their best effort to create a "one day" story. No follow-up FOI requests. No running statements -- the press release made clear there would be no further statements beyond those given. The Huskies hustled to get the event behind them. Over. Done. Do you best to move on.

Contrast that with the open sore that is the Joe Sestak job offer from the White House. Earlier in the week, the White House press secretary found himself repeating over, and over the same statement -- that he stuck to his statement from March -- and that was not satisfying the media. Today, we get a report from the White House counsel's office that indeed, an offer was made to the Pennsylvania Democratic challenger to Arlen Spector's senate seat.

Not exactly Secretary of the Navy. But that's how far this tale had spun out of control. The White House had stonewalled, had denied, had evaded. And if the counsel's finding is true, this appears to be much ado about nothing.

Except it has overwhelmed a race, and could have gone away weeks ago, if the White House had simply said -- we offered the U.S. representative a plum advisory spot if he'd get out of the way of the former Republican senator that the President had promised to help get re-elected.

And, we'd probably not have found out that former President Bill Clinton was the broker of the deal.

To some extend, Sestak is responsible for the controversy when he said he had been approached to get out of the primary battle. But, he never said what he was offered, and the Obama administration -- if not directly denying -- obfuscated the circumstances.

This floats up on our shores because Clinton was in Little Rock for a groundbreaking at his library. Guess what -- he wasn't made available to reporters to talk about the Sestak offer. And in classic three-way drug deal gone bad pistol pointing, no one knows who requested that the Clinton would not take questions from his former hometown paper. -- not Senator Blanche Lincoln's PR team (who Clinton spoke for and endorsed in our Dem runoff), not the Secret Service detail, not Clinton's spokespersons.

So, the Sestak Stall continues. Here perhaps the politicians could take note of the sports world.

Get it over in one day -- and move on.