>>Nobody? Awfully big of you to speak for, oh, "nobody"

People who employ staff will know what I mean. A manager who invents policy on the fly and blasts it out without approval? Especially on politicized topics like this? No thanks.

>>Do you really want to define that as a standard and start evaluating other communications that fall into this realm?
Think very carefully before answering, because round 1 is our current vice president. :)

I hold no brief for the VP and nor is this some sort of challenge. My statement is a generality that will resonate with anybody who imagines the effect on their organization if employed executives can blurt out whatever they please. Period.

Reading further in the article you cite:

A formal statement critical of the president should have been closely vetted and approved by the mayor’s office, and White refused to acknowledge the misstep, the official said. White said Hoskins fired him Friday.
White said he thought he would have been derelict in his duties to not quickly make a statement on the president’s announcement.
“Everyone was looking for responses from the regulators. One of my chief concerns is always consistency and clarity in the marketplace — you can’t have something that big sitting out there without responding to it,” he said.
...
On the president’s proposed health-care fix, he said: “I wasn’t saying I was against it, I also was saying I didn’t know enough to fully support it — I want to be clear, and I think it is, I was not speaking for Mayor Gray.”