Ickes and Penn, After School, Behind the Bike Racks

Clinton campaign official Harold Ickes dumps blame for the Clinton campaign's problems on "chief strategist" Mark Penn:

Harold Ickes definitely doesn’t buy the argument that Mark Penn isn’t responsible for everything that has happened to the Hillary Clinton campaign.

"Mark Penn has run this campaign," said Ickes in a brief phone interview this morning. "Besides Hillary Clinton, he is the single most responsible person for this campaign.

"Now, he has been circumscribed to some extent by Maggie Williams," said Ickes, who then pointed out that that was only a recent development.

When asked about the assertion by one senior Clinton official the campaign was effectively run by committee, diluting Penn’s authority, Ickes was incredulous.

"I don’t know what campaign you’re talking about," said Ickes. "I have been at meetings where he introduces himself as the campaign’s chief strategist. I’ve heard him call himself that many times, say, ‘I am the chief strategist.’"

Asked if Penn preferred the title of chief strategist to pollster, Ickes said, "Prefer it? He insists on it!"

When asked if Penn was therefore responsible for the campaign’s strategy, Ickes said, "It’s pretty plain for anyone to see that he has shaped the strategy of the campaign. He has called the shots."

"Mark Penn," he said, "has dominated the message in this campaign. Dominated it."

Who's Harold Ickes?

Ickes, 67, is a legendary figure in Democratic politics, a pedigreed political street fighter known for both his loyalty and his abiding grudges. The son of a key adviser to President Franklin D. Roosevelt, he came up in New York City's reform Democratic politics and later worked in the Clinton White House. Ickes was the architect of Bill Clinton's 1996 reelection before emerging as a central figure in Hillary Rodham Clinton's 2000 Senate victory.

"In 2000, he was indispensable," said Bill de Blasio, a New York City Council member who was Clinton's 2000 campaign manager. "He was the one figure who ranged farthest across the campaign. He, in many ways, was the person who insured that all the pieces came together and had the standing to do that -- had the history, had the relationships, had the style to make all the pieces fit."

Ickes and Penn have history:

Ickes himself, however, does take sides. He's known for his total loyalty to his friends and his fierce enmity for their enemies...He has described Clinton's former adviser, and current critic, Dick Morris in terms too profane to print.
Hailing from the Democratic Party's more liberal wing, Ickes has also been at odds, at times, with both Clintons' more centrist advisers, such as the pollster Mark Penn. Ickes' departure from the Clinton administration was part of a more general shift away from the Democratic base, and when he joined Hillary Clinton's campaign in 1999, he joked to The Washington Post that there was "some irony" to his return: "Fired in the West Wing, hired in the East Wing."

The history with Morris goes waaaaaaaay back, to the 60's:

In 1964 Morris organized his West Side district in support of a local candidate; by sending students to ring every doorbell he tripled the district's Democratic turnout. Graduating from Columbia University in three years, he worked New Hampshire for Eugene McCarthy's 1968 presidential campaign, butting heads over budget and turf with another West Side Democrat, Harold Ickes. Twenty-eight years later they're still at it: Ickes, now Clinton's deputy chief of staff for policy and political affairs, uses his control of the campaign purse strings to torment Morris. Eight years older than Morris, Ickes belonged to the Democratic reformers who had taken power on the West Side in the early 1960s. Morris came at them in 1969 as leader of the "West Side Kids," setting up his own political clubhouses, running a slate of candidates for party district-leader slots and getting all seven elected--which gave him de facto control of a 30-block stretch.

When Bill Clinton turned to Dick Morris to resuscitate his presidency after the 1994 meltdown, Morris brought along a little-known pollster to test out the micro-ideas like school uniforms and such: Mark Penn.  Morris was eventually tossed aside after he was caught reading polling data to his prostitute as she sucked on his toes, but Penn stuck around and led Clinton to a resounding 49% performance against Bob Dole.  

Clinton won reelection for three reasons: because Newt Gingrich had overplayed his hand in trying to destroy the federal government, because Dole was a tired candidate, and because Ickes put together a hugely effective soft money operation that overwhelmed Dole in the spring and summer and kept him from ever getting any momentum.  

Penn believed Clinton won because of the "micro" ideas like school uniforms.  The conflict between them is probably ideological.  They also apparently don't like each other.  And warring with Penn is probably for Ickes a continuation by proxy of his war with Morris.

As Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign reaches a make-or-break moment in Texas and Ohio, it seems apparent to just about everyone that the message crafted by Penn for Clinton has been a disaster.  She may not have been able to beat Obama regardless of what she did, but once she could no longer benefit from greater name recognition and familiarity—essentially after Super Tuesday—she stopped winning races.  And if she can't win Ohio and Texas five days from now, she'll probably never be president.  

And Harold Ickes wants people to know that it's Mark Penn's fault.  And he's probably right.