Former-but-never-started White House communications director Anthony Scaramucci experienced a rough, controversial 10 days with his title, and he ultimately got canned by new Chief of Staff Gen. John Kelly as a signal of a fresh start in the West Wing. Scaramucci's undoing was largely centered around his verbal gaffes -- avoiding those was a key part of the job -- including a profanity-laced, on-the-record interview with The New Yorker's Ryan Lizza. The natural reaction was to ridicule Scaramucci for an ironic exit from a job he never officially started.
However, as Buzzfeed shares, Scaramucci developed an outline of a communications plan that attempted to "professionalize" a maligned operation. Some of his ideas were obvious, like returning all reporter contacts each day before leaving the office, and some were a more unconventional way of looking at communicating with the media and the public about the president and his administration's efforts and goals.
One of those unorthodox ideas was to have a lottery citizens could enter to play golf with Donald Trump. The idea would have been to hold an online lottery -- maybe much like the online lottery for Masters tickets -- to get to join Trump at one of his clubs for a day, perhaps even raising money for charity.
Comms need to humanize POTUS and burnish his image. For example, POTUS is the best golfer to serve as President. Perhaps, we embrace it with a national online lottery to play a round of golf with him….or a charity auction.
The potential security concerns aside, it might not have been the best look, already criticized for how many times Trump has played golf as president, for the Commander-in-Chief to be spending time playing golf with Americans instead of working on their behalf. Nonetheless, credit Scaramucci for willing to bring some new ideas to the table.
