PR czar Richard Edelman's tribute to and recollection of former Reagan advisor Michael Deaver is a stark reminder to all who've spent part or all of our careers in public relations and reputation management: the irony of those who toil so carefully and diligently to burnish the image of others, only to fall victim to the hubris and carelessness about which they constantly admonished their bosses/clients. How a street-smart, media-savvy heavy such as Deaver could be taken down by the same forces he dealt with everyday for decades is astonishing. Deaver was the guy the press tore apart when he became a little too successful as a influencer after leaving the White House in Reagan's second term. No matter that his Rolodex was his business long before he moved to Washington and that most of the names added to it during his years as Reagan's primary handler got in there by dint of tireless work. Not to minimize his transgressions -- his perjury rap cannot be minimized. But the irony overshadows even the felony. Contrast Brand Deaver to the Queen of Mean, as in Leona Helmsley, whose death followed Deaver's by a few days. Disparate icons of the 1980s knocked from their respective summits in equally disparate ways.
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