In the case of Hillary Clinton’s stunning eight-point Iowa caucus loss at the hands of Barack Obama, they are wholly applicable.

But like so many cornered CEO’s, Clinton has played her defeat as something entirely different and thus dismayed her supporters and detractors, both. Supporters know she was trounced and want to know why. Detractors are delighted and only happy to dispense their own obituaries. Hillaryland’s well laid plans were singularly blown up by the upstart Illinois Senator, everyone knows, and so it’s left to her or others to tell us why.

What plays did she run in the wake of her worst campaigning day? Superficial Bear Hugs designed to co-opt Obama’s chosen message of Change. We are going to have change and that change will be a Democratic president in the White House in 2009…We have presented the case for change…America needs a new beginning. As well, she announced her plans to escalate attacks on Obama, what will amount to unrelenting Call Outs and Mirrors on the new leader.

But her drubbing is too obvious to triangulate. It is a political pig on which no amount of lipstick will make beautiful.

What play should she have run? A Disco. Coined in the 1980s in any Ivy League debate tournament, the Disco is a rhetorical dance that seeks to stop the bleeding by taking a player one step back so that it may move two steps forward. Albeit high risk, it is a strategy of contrition or, sometimes, apology, and it is often mistaken by CEOs and politicos alike as an admission of weakness or culpability. You want me to admit what!? Are you out of your mind?!.

But leaders – and often their lawyers – are famous for underestimating the public’s willingness to forgive. And in the case of Candidate Clinton who, by most accounts, is an impersonal political brand, we have a player who badly needs to show us and share with us authentic flaws and imperfect judgments – and thus to be forgiven for them.

Clinton’s concession speech was no concession and, thus, no Disco. Instead of hurriedly filling an empty room with cheering shills, she missed her chance to give us McCain-style straight talk. This was a great day for Democrats. We’re going to take this enthusiasm and go straight to New Hampshire, she bravely opined.

Arthur Page, a pioneer of prudent PR, taught us that no one person or organization in public life exists or profits without the tacit blessing of the public. They operate, in other words, with the public’s permission because, well, it’s their lawn we’re tromping on. So when candidates miscalculate, it’s often in their best interests, however counter-intuitive, to say so and make it right.

That, dear debaters, is a Disco. You take one step back to take two steps forward. You say you blew it, that you took a hit, all to move forward again, credibly and with certain improved measures of understanding and authenticity.

But like the current President, understanding and authenticity are not things that Hillary Clinton apparently seeks. She’d no sooner explain what went wrong on the subject of Iowa than George W. Bush would on the subject of Iraq.

Hillary missed the moment to share her grief and ideas for recovery. Instead of a well-run Disco, she ran a desperate and implausible Bear Hug on the new candidate of inevitability (I’m the candidate of change, darnit). And, apparently, she plans to invest her next week’s effort in the politics of personal destruction and strategies of de-positioning (We’ll find Obama’s skeletons, I promise).

Alan Kelly