BulletProofBlog the blog on crisis communications

New White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs had a rough first week on the job.

The press corps that covered the Obama campaign was criticized in some quarters for taking it easy on a candidate they liked - to the point that Saturday Night Live made fun of the fawning coverage that Candidate Obama received from otherwise skeptical reporters. But now that President Obama is in the White House and his campaign spokesman is settling down in the Press Secretary' s office, it' s a whole new ballgame.

Unfortunately for Gibbs and company, this is mostly their fault. Gibbs' s first appearance in the White House briefing room was a standing room only affair, and the assembled White House press corps, perhaps not surprisingly, went for his throat. Gibbs largely failed the test by making the most obvious of rookie mistakes.

The first rule of the spokesperson game, in the White House or anywhere else, is "be prepared."  Gibbs should have known he would get questions about the second swearing in ceremony the night before and the growing controversy over why video cameras were kept out of the room. The issue had been widely discussed on all the TV news broadcasts for the previous 12 hours. Yet Gibbs seemed surprised and annoyed by the obvious question.

When another entirely predictable line of questioning - about an off-the-record background briefing on the Guantanamo Bay detention center - came up, Gibbs again appeared confused and unprepared. At one point he even let slip the name of one of the background briefers, prompting reporters to press him on the embarrassing question of whether they were now free to name that person on-the-record.

The lesson for the new White House press secretary, and anyone else who finds themselves in a spokesperson role: Anticipate the obvious so you can better deal with the unexpected. The questions in that first on-camera briefing that Gibbs fumbled were entirely predictable. He failed to do his homework. He and his boss are paying the price.