Tylenol

In the 1980's a murderer killed seven people by tampering with bottles of Tylenol.

The response by Johnson & Johnson, the makers of Tylenol, has become a textbook example of crisis management.

It was quickly demonstrated that Johnson & Johnson were not at fault - there was no doubt that the capsules had been tampered with after they were on store shelves. And the problem was local - confined to Chicago.

Nevertheless, Johnson & Johnson pulled the product off the shelves throughout the entire country - destroying product worth $100 million.  It also took out adds advising people to not take any Tylenol capsules they already had in their medicine cabinets. They offered a free exchange of capsules for solid tablets.

Several months after the crisis was past, Johnson & Johnson reintroduced the product in tamper-proof packaging.

Before the crisis, Tylenol was the number one brand in its category. A few years after the crisis, Tylenol was once again the number on brand in its category.

Peak, abyss, and peak again, all in the space of a few years.

Let me analogize: the Republican Party is Johnson & Johnson, the presidency is Tylenol.  Neo-cons and hubris are the tamperers.

The tainted product - George W. Bush - has now been pulled from the shelves (albeit by the Constitution, not the Republican Party - but then again, few analogies are perfect).

The campaign to reintroduce the product runs from now until 2012. There is only one thing that will serve as the equivalent to "tamper-proof" packaging - the party has to repudiate George W. Bush. It is the only way to convince the American people that "we get it", and the next nominee can be trusted to run an administration that is competent and productive.

Failure to repudiate Bush will result in lingering questions hanging over the heads of all Republican candidates for office at all levels. Voters will remain skeptical regarding whether any lessons have been learned, and whether the new product might also be susceptible to tampering by the same malevolent forces that wrecked the Bush Administration.

Some of you may think "the Bush years weren't that bad". But recall: this is man who wanted Harriet Miers on the Supreme Court, that he blew up the budget to no productive purpose, and his response to 9/11 was to start the second-most costly war in our nation's history - with a country that had nothing to do with 9/11.

Repudiate George W. Bush - it is the only way to repair the damage to the Republican brand.