I read this very interesting article in the New York Observer about the mismanagement of the Clinton campaign by Mark Penn, and I was astonished at his short-sightedness as displayed in several of the paragraphs in the article. No future campaigns at the state legislature, congressional, or presidential level, should EVER hire Mark Penn again to run their campaign. This man, the bloated recipient of the $4 million dollar fee from Clinton’s campaign coffers, has completely driven the once-inevitable Clinton campaign straight into the ditch.
A source in the campaign, speaking on background, said that Mr. Penn’s philosophy was perfectly represented by a comment he made during one of Mrs. Clinton’s debate preps at campaign headquarters in early winter. About 15 staffers were in a room with Mrs. Clinton discussing how she could best respond to a particular line of attack. One of the aides, the source recalled, had an idea.
"I think you need to show a little bit of humanity," said the aide.
Mr. Penn interjected. "Oh, come on, being human is overrated."
The article further discusses how Mark Penn is the driving figure behind the "go-negative" strategy that has not garnered Hillary Clinton any success in the eleven states that she has lost in a row this month. It also highlights the reliance of Mark Penn on micro-trends, which is the main philosophy of his book which I won’t bother to name because no one should shell out twenty bucks for a load of crap. Here’s his take on the voters who connect emotionally to candidates:
He reserves a special disdain for a group he identifies as the "impressionable elites": people who can afford to pick candidates based on fuzzy feelings rather than on the impact the candidates’ policies will have on their lives. At a recent discussion of the book at the Strand bookstore in Manhattan, during which Mr. Penn said, "The theory of the book is that the era of big trends is over," one audience member asked if Mr. Obama was not a "macrotrend." (Barack Obama’s chief strategist, David Axelrod, had made a similar gibe earlier this year.)
Mark Penn also defended the large fee paid to his firm by the Clinton campaign by saying that, "No one ever expected the campaign to be this big and in this many states," and further added that more than 70% of the expenditures had been for direct mail, printing, and postage. This is clear that the negative hit mail, such as the false pro-choice mailer attacking Obama, came from Penn’s firm. This sentence, as bolded above, shows the lack of a Plan B after February 5th.
They did not adhere to a national strategy of taking every vote and contesting every state by putting money into campaign offices and staffers on the ground. They just thought that because of Hillary Clinton’s last name and her link to Bill Clinton, which does her a disservice in my view, that she would automatically be the nominee. This was the inevitability strategy that Penn and others in the campaign had played, and they’re on the ropes now because that strategy has played itself out in eleven successive straight losses to Barack Obama, who had the clearly superior campaign organization and the commitment to campaign in as many states with the use of retail politics.
One thing I’m glad about the Barack Obama campaign is that it’s done what others couldn’t do, compete successfully with the 50 state strategy as championed by Howard Dean, and that it has relegated players like Mark Penn to the sidelines. If Hillary Clinton loses the nomination, her loss will be squarely planted on Mark Penn’s shoulders, and that’s what he and others of his ilk in her campaign deserve.
EDIT: Just read this interesting bit in The Huffington Post about how Mark Penn is angering his neighbors in Georgetown:
Hillary's Chief Strategist Mark Penn angering DC neighbors.
Hillary Rodham Clinton's pit-bull pollster and chief strategist Mark Penn has his Washington, DC, neighborhood in an uproar. He recently started multimillion-dollar renovations on his house on O Street in Georgetown, but didn't alert anyone beforehand, said one local. "It includes an underground garage and home office. His yard is an ugly, huge gaping hole that looks like the descent into hell. Then he put a Port-a-Potty on the lawn." Close neighbors include Lloyd Cutler, former White House Counsel to Bill Clinton, and his wife, Polly Kraft. A Clinton campaign rep did not return our call or e-mail.