BP CEO Tony Hayward remained calm and composed for the brutal first round of opening statements during his testimony before the House Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations last week.
While many House members expressed their disgust and displeasure with the way BP has handled what has become the largest oil spill in U.S. history, Hayward acted like any distressed corporation’s CEO would and handled all inquiries in a smooth, detached manner.
Hayward countered attempts by committee members to place blame on him and BP for the environmental disaster with calculated statements that acknowledged the seriousness of the matter while distancing himself and his company from full responsibility.
“None of us yet knows why it happened. But whatever the cause, we at BP will do what we can to make certain that an incident like this does not happen again,” Hayward said.
Hayward’s smoothness should come as no surprise. Top executives in the world’s largest and most powerful multinational corporations have been trained since their college days to handle the types of crises that occur during normal business operations.
X204: Business Communication, offered through the Kelley School of Business, trains business students how to handle these situations adeptly. Students learn to recognize the problem while separating their organizations from the cause of the issue, ultimately avoiding responsibility and thus blame for the incident.
Hayward cannot be blamed for his adherence to the public relations script. It’s merely his responsibility as the face of BP to handle the disaster in a way the best suits BP and its shareholders. Those looking for Hayward or anyone else to accept personal responsibility for the disaster are kidding themselves.
BP has taken the right steps in correcting its reputation with consumers. It has already pledged $20 billion to help remedy the situation in the Gulf of Mexico, even though some members of Congress seem to think this is unnecessary.
Rep. Joe Barton, R-Texas, expressed his dismay at the White House-mandated “slush fund” and issued a public apology during his opening statement in the hearing. “I apologize,” Barton said. “I do not want to live in a country where any time a citizen or a corporation does something that is legitimately wrong is subject to some sort of political pressure that is — again, in my words — amounts to a shakedown. So, I apologize.”
As expected, Barton’s apology resulted in an image crisis for the GOP, which is already under political pressure to distance itself from favoring big corporations such as BP.
Party leaders John Boehner and Eric Cantor quickly expressed their disapproval of Barton’s apology and demanded he recant or face losing his seat as ranking member of the House Energy and Commerce Committee.
The anxiety of Boehner and Cantor demonstrates the GOP’s skittishness regarding the Deepwater Horizon disaster and the upcoming midterm elections.
With populist wrath shifting away from President Barack Obama’s agenda to large corporations such as BP, the GOP must find a way to be seen as a party of the people, not the dollar.