It hasn't been a good week for the memo writing world.

First, there was the publication of Hillary Clinton "pollster" Mark Penn's "strategy memos."
My favorite part:

4. Requirements for any Launch

1. Functioning political and fundraising operation
2. Basic Message about how you would change America, combined with willingness to listen and refine
3. The outline of major policy directions
4. National and local press strategies
5. Plan for 1st visits to key states
6. Web operation ready to go
7. Response war room for attacks/research operation
8. fwp (first woman president plan)

Yes, I definitely think you should have a Basic Message about how you would change America. That'll be $1,000,000, please!

Next up, our vaunted Department of Homeland Security with its equally brilliant memo warning employees about types of behavior that could be espionage:

Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, in a memo to employees obtained by The Associated Press, said employees should suspect espionage if:

— Someone asks an employee for classified and sensitive information or access to systems.

— Someone asks an employee traveling overseas to bring back an envelope or package.

— An employee has regular contact with a person suspected of being part of a foreign intelligence service, terrorist group or foreign criminal enterprise.

— Someone makes a request that makes a department employee uncomfortable or compromised.

— A department employee has a personal relationship with a foreigner that seems suspicious.

— There is suspicious behavior with a foreigner inside or outside of the department.

Hmm, really? "Someone asks an employee for classified and sensitive information or access to systems." You think that's bad?

That's the current state of business communications in this country. First the Penn strategy memos that say "Our strategy is to strategize," and now a DHS memo saying to detect espionage, be on the lookout for espionage.

She should default on her "debt" to Mark Penn.

F.O.O., it is 84 days until the election. 84...84... And, just to make sure my point is crystal clear to GWB, DICK, Senator McCentury, "Speaker" Pelosi, other spineless good - for - nothing Congressional enablers, and A.G. Mukasey, I repeat, "1984 was not meant to be an instruction manual!" Y'all think they'll hear me this time? Nah...me neither...

Let's count down with Keith & company for this loverly Tuesday evening!

In regards to the "Celebrity ad" "Democratic" strategist Mark Penn wrote:

"Fair or not, as advertising it did its job: It used humor, stuck viewers with memorable images and created a debate, just as Lyndon Johnson’s 1964 ‘Daisy’ ad, Walter Mondale’s ‘Red Phone’ spot 20 years later and Hillary Rodham Clinton’s ‘3 a.m.’ commercial in 2008 did,"

http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com...

He basically just praised the most vapid attack ad I've ever seen.  It does not matter if he has a valid point (which is debatable).  If this man ever intends to work for a prominent Democrat again he'd probably be wise to stop advocating for and generally praising Republican skullduggery.  This is crap.

Mark Penn is a racist asshole.  I dont know if this has been diaried. But I just want to repeat it again. Mark Penn is a racist asshole.

In a March 2007 memo, Mark Penn, Clinton's former chief strategist, wrote, "all of these articles about his boyhood in Indonesia and his life in Hawaii are geared toward showing his background is diverse, multicultural and putting that in a new light. Save it for 2050," according to Atlantic magazine writer Joshua Green.

"It also exposes a very strong weakness for him -- his roots to basic American values and culture are at best limited. I cannot imagine America electing a president during a time of war who is not at his center fundamentally American in his thinking and in his values," Penn wrote.

The campaign memos released by the Clinton campaign confirm an early suspicion that I had.  Below the fold is a time-line of events followed by analysis.

With the publication of the memos from within the Clinton campaign in The Atlantic, we can see the internal strife within that operation.  Not only does this show the different approach of the No Drama Obama crew, but it demonstrates quite clearly that Hillary Clinton did a poor job of heading her campaign team and that her purportedly excellent executive skills were not as advertised.

But there's more here -- both reflections on the past and, more importantly, cautions for the future.

First - the past -

Did the Clinton campaign push the Wright tapes into the public eye?
So far the evidence is minimal, captured by a line in one of Penn's memos.

As Jake Tapper notes:

Penn writes that if they come out of Iowa and it's a two-way race with Obama, "on Friday we do a media interviews (sic) and basically say that he is unvetted, discuss his ever-changing positions. Release the tapes. Create immediate pressure that deprives him of oxygen.'

I recommend reading The Front-Runner's Fall. by The Atlantic's Joshua Green

I enjoyed reading it. After reading it, i felt relieved that Hillary Clinton is not our nominee for reasons i will explain.

That said, every one is entitled to their opinion.

Nobody really asked, but here's mine.

Short but sweet.

Most of my reactions to the Josh Green piece for The Atlantic on the epic clusterfuck of the Clinton campaign are opinion and not analysis, so I'm posting them here rather than at FiveThirtyEight.

On Mark Penn (emphasis added):

In light of this history, he got off to an inauspicious start when Clinton entered the race in January 2007, by demanding the title "chief strategist" (previously he had been one of several "senior advisers") and presenting each of his senior colleagues with a silver bowl inscribed with the words of Horace Mann: "Be ashamed to die until you have won some victory for humanity."

Dear Mark,

Be ashamed to die.

According to Marc Ambinder, the Josh Green article detailing the Clinton memos are about to go up at 3:30 PT/6:30 PT.

I assume we'll want an open thread to discuss the fireworks contained therein...

UPDATE:

Here is a link to the memos.

UPDATE 2:

This diary is not meant for bashing-HRC and her voters, but rather a chance to look at the success/failures of the attacks in the primary and what can be done about them in the general.  I'm not interested in relitigating the primaries by any means...

UPDATE 3:

Here's a link to the article itself: "The Front Runner's Fall"

You thought he was gone didn’t you? Well it appears that it is tough to keep a good story down. By good, I mean a story of high drama, back stabbing, and discord. Just as the wounds of the primary have apparently healed the behind the scenes story of the Clinton campaign threatens to revive them. The article in question is by Atlantic Senior Editor Joshua Green and will be forthcoming in the magazines September issue. A sneak-peak was written by Politico's Mike Allen Most of the talk regarding the Clinton camp revolved around Mark Penn and the fact he was universally loathed. This article we be interesting for reasons beyond Penn though.

Oh boy, there is an article coming soon to be published in the "Atlantic Monthly", where Mark Penn advises Hillary Clinton to "portray Barack Obama as having a "limited" connection "to basic American values and culture," according to a forthcoming article in The Atlantic."

This article will also talk about the "circular firing squads, poor conference calls, and the lack of leadership from Hillary herself in getting her team on track.

Was she really ready to lead ?? Was she really ready to lead the nation as a "true" progressive ??

Hillary Clinton ran a great campaign! And she left the race right after she was mathematically eliminated, not one day later. She racked up that debt for a noble cause!

We MUST help her retire that debt. She owes money to MANY SMALL VENDERS and they must be paid. For example: A vender who gave her the following advice is owed tons of money:

The Penn memo suggesting that the campaign target Obama's "lack of American roots" said in part: "All of these articles about his boyhood in Indonesia and his life in Hawaii are geared towards showing his background is diverse, multicultural and putting that in a new light.

"Save it for 2050. ... Every speech should contain the line you were born in the middle of America American to the middle class in the middle of the last century. And talk about the basic bargain as about the deeply American values you grew up with, learned as a child and that drive you today. Values of fairness, compassion, responsibility, giving back.

Yeah Barack Obama. Save your foreign-looking self for 2050! We're AMERRRRICANS!!!

Surprise, surprise:according to an article called "The Front-Runner's Fall" by Josh Green based on some internal Clinton campaign e-mails  in the upcoming addition of The Atlantic Hillary Clinton's top campaign strategist, Mark Penn, advised Hillary to paint foreign and disconnected from American values:

The magazine reports Penn suggested getting much rougher with Obama in a memo on March 30, after her crucial wins in Texas and Ohio: "Does anyone believe that it is possible to win the nomination without, over these next two months, raising all these issues on him? ... Won’t a single tape of [the Reverend Jeremiah] Wright going off on America with Obama sitting there be a game ender?"

Penn, the presidential campaign’s chief strategist, wrote in a memo to Clinton excerpted in the article:  "I cannot imagine America electing a president during a time of war who is not at his center fundamentally American in his thinking and in his values."

It seems clear from this article any lingering doubts could be put to rest that Hillary's campaign management was riff with Rove-Republican thinking .

The magazine, that is.  Politico's Mike Allen has apparently been given a peek at a new article, by Joshua Green, based on scores of internal memos leaked from the Clinton campaign.

Mark Penn, the top campaign strategist for Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.), advised her to portray Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) as having a "limited" connection "to basic American values and culture," according to a forthcoming article in The Atlantic magazine.

The magazine reports Penn suggested getting much rougher with Obama in a memo on March 30, after her crucial wins in Texas and Ohio: "Does anyone believe that it is possible to win the nomination without, over these next two months, raising all these issues on him? ... Won’t a single tape of [the Reverend Jeremiah] Wright going off on America with Obama sitting there be a game ender?"

Here's a preview. More of this is beginning to leak out from Atlantic Monthly's Josh Green

Writes Ann Kornblut on her WaPo blog: "former advisers to Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton are in a tizzy over an upcoming piece in the Atlantic Monthly that chronicles the inner workings of the now-defunct campaign.

Of particular concern are nearly 200 internal memos that the author, Josh Green, obtained -- 130 or so of which he plans to scan in and post online...."
Here's a preview! Radaronline is leaking the memo @ http://radaronline.com/... I will be updating as I get more facts.

  Mark Penn hates you. Everything Penn believes in--or, at least, everything he does to make money--runs counter to the very change that millions of Americans are thirsting for. Barack Obama has signaled to his top contributors that they should help retire Sen. Clinton's campaign debt. There should be one demand by those willing to make such a contribution--not a dime for Mark Penn.

Gail Sheehy's Vanity Fair piece "Hillaryland at War" is a must-read for political junkies.

I'll give credit to Sheehy. How can one NOT read a piece about Hillary's campaign that starts:

Are you here for the Deathwatch?"...That was how my friends in the traveling press corps welcomed me into the bub­ble of the Clinton campaign plane. It was three days before the March 4 Democratic primaries in Ohio and Texas, and they were boarding the 737 with the sullen obedience of inmates after an outing in the yard. Some had been following the once inevitable front-runner since the January 3 Iowa caucus when she was first pronounced to be in a "slump."