What a lobbyist does: The Lanny Davis/Roger Goodell NFL edition

Yes, the best defense is a good offense, but sometimes a bad defense is just a bad defense. Sometimes it even makes things worse. For an example, let’s look at the defense mounted for NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell by noted Washington lobbyist Lanny Davis.

Davis went on CNN over the weekend, and on the network’s website Wednesday, to defend Goodell against the hordes baying for his head. CNN specifies that Davis hasn’t represented the NFL or Goodell himself, though he has represented the NFL’s Washington Redskins in the controversy over the team’s refusal to dump its manifestly racist moniker. That’s a cause in which Goodell has supported team owner Dan Snyder, who is intent on keeping the name.

Davis has also represented Bill Clinton, Alex Rodriguez, and Penn State.

Davis’ first move as Goodell’s ostensibly unsolicited defender is to acknowledge that the commissioner blew things, big-time, in his initial handling of the Ray Rice affair. Rice is the Baltimore Ravens running back who can be seen on videotape delivering a knockout punch to his then-fiancee (now wife) Janay Palmer in an Atlantic City elevator.

Before the tape was made public, but after Rice had been arrested for the assault, Goodell suspended the player for two games. After the lenience of that punishment produced an uproar, Goodell tightened the league’s punishments for domestic violence. After the video surfaced, Goodell suspended Rice indefinitely.

In Davis’ view, Goodell commited “a huge mistake ... a terrible mistake,” but eventually achieved the right outcome.

Goodell “turned in the right direction, following the three basic rules of crisis management, whether in business, politics, or life,” Davis wrote.

“First, he acknowledged that he made a mistake and took personal responsibility.”

Let’s stop there for a moment. This “taking personal responsibility” bit is the ultimate Washington, D.C., escape clause.

How exactly has Goodell taken “personal responsibility,” other than holding up under the heat of negative punditry? He hasn’t resigned as commissioner. He hasn’t been fired. To our knowledge, he hasn’t been docked a day’s pay. It’s not clear if a nasty report about the Rice case has landed in his personnel file at NFL headquarters to be reviewed by, well, Roger Goodell.

There’s talk that his job must be on the line with the team owners, but the prevailing wisdom is that he’ll be fine until and unless the owners detect an erosion of NFL profits as a result of the case. He hasn’t taken “responsibility” at all. This is “taking personal responsibility” as perfected by Ronald Reagan in the Iran-Contra affair: responsibility without consequences.

Davis praises Goodell for announcing, in the teeth of the uproar, that “domestic violence and sexual assault are wrong. They are illegal. They are never acceptable and have no place in the NFL under any circumstances.”

Goodell just learned that?

Davis praises Goodell for laying out “a detailed forward-looking mandatory education and training program to implement this policy. Most important, he announced far more severe penalties than before.”

Again, where was he before?

Finally, Davis praises Goodell for authorizing “an independent investigation to answer all the questions and verify the facts,” to be conducted by former FBI chief Robert Mueller, who happens now to also be in the business of Washington fixism.

As Davis describes this investigation, its central thrust will be to determine “whether Roger Goodell lied about not seeing the second videotape [the one showing Rice’s punch inside the elevator] or about what he was told by Ray Rice on July 16 when they met behind closed doors.” That’s it? Sounds like a pretty narrow investigation. Here’s betting that Goodell can beat it.

The basic flaw in Davis’ brief for the defense is that he treats Goodell’s errors chiefly as violations of the rules of “crisis management.” That’s a typically Washingtonian way of looking at the case -- as a matter of “optics,” of appearances. The fixer’s playbook is designed not to address the fundamental issues but the way they’re perceived by the public.

You want to know why nothing gets done in Washington? It’s because the entire political community has come to believe that nothing matters but the way things come across on TV or among the pundit class. Lanny Davis is a product of that culture.

Should Goodell have been proactive in dealing with off-field violence by NFL players, which has been splashed over the media for years? Doesn’t matter; when the chips were down, he created an educational program and hired an outside investigator.

What should the NFL under Goodell have done, and do for the future, in the area of brain injuries suffered by an outrageous proportion of players? Settle with the players for what amounts to chump change? Goodell’s done that, and draped the league in the mantle of an organization that “cares,” in the process. Anyway, there’s no mention of the neurological toll in Davis’ article.

If there’s any justice, Davis’ defense of Goodell will be taken as an argument for why the commissioner has to go. And if Goodell knew this defense was coming and let it be published anyway, that’s another point in his disfavor. A commissioner who understands the magnitude of the NFL’s problems and the inadequacy of this kind of defense would have called up Davis and said, “Thanks anyway, Lanny, but just keep your mouth shut.”

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