David Gergen Shares His Views on Crisis Management

David Gergen, who has served several presidents, both Democrats and Republicans, has offered his advise to crisis managing the BP disaster in the Gulf. Gergen is now a Harvard professor and television commentator--one of the best in the business because his views are so balanced and intelligent.

The following comes from Gergen's own blog post.

1. Set up a daily command center in Washington where a presidentially appointed leader runs the show, calls the shots, coordinates the overall effort, briefs the president and briefs the country.
2. Have two deputies, one to direct the leak-stoppage and the other to direct the clean-up. Ex-CEOs and generals would be excellent candidates.
3. Summon all the major oil and drilling companies to the White House for emergency efforts to get the hole plugged.
4. Get BP out of the picture for clean-up; just send it the bill. If it is still needed for hole-plugging, okay, but ensure that it answers every day to directions from the government. If BP needs new internal leadership, figure out how to get that done.
5. Employ the U.S. military for organizational coordination and where needed, for anything else such as clean-up.
6. Make more aggressive efforts to tap the best minds in the world for help.
7. Provide the country with the kind of daily briefings that the military has mastered for wartime — bring in people who are smart, straight and tough.
8. Ensure that economic assistance is provided to families, small businesses and communities that need it with dispatch and generosity.
9. Call off the finger pointing until we get out of this mess.
10. And finally, very importantly, exercise the powers of leadership every day from the Oval Office.