Glad to see some attention being paid to the evils of Mark Penn. His downfall would, if it comes to pass, truly be one of the best consequences of a Hillary Clinton non-nomination. In my mind, Clinton's decision to hire Penn did and does a lot to undermine her efforts to project herself as the more committed progressive than Barack Obama in this race.
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The Penn Factor
07 Jan 2008 08:21 am
Comments (12)
Penn is getting a whacking in the press, but how much of the campaign's trouble is due to his incompetence, and how much to Obama and crew just playing a better game? Up until mid to late November, the Hillary campaign was getting accolades for being flawless. The press seems to have changed its tune pretty fast.
I think the campaign has done a reasonably good job of presenting Hillary as she is. She gets high marks on stuff like knowledge and experience and strength; people respect her. The problem is with Hillary herself. People respect her, but that doesn't mean they want her to be president.
Hillary was doomed with or without Penn. He is one of those empty suits who acquire prominence in our society quite often.
The sad and pathological fact about Hillary's fall is the fact that the hate generate by the right has metastases into the left. We now have left and right driven by hate; that's a very sad reality.
This doesn't imply support for Hillary or seeing her as a worthy candidate. However, hate filled electorate supporting hope and change must be a macabre joke.
People are so quick to diagnose evil these days. Surely banality is a better explanation for Penn.
The thing people need to understand about Penn and Clinton is that there was never a decision to "hire" Penn in the way that consultants are usually hired. The Hillary/Mark Penn relationship is one of the least understood in DC but has been absolutely central to her career since 94 when she turned to Dick Morris to help save her. Morris in turn brought in Penn and ever since then Hillary and Mark have been inseparable - despite his atrocious performance record.
Anyone familiar with the work Penn does will tell you that he's known for producing the results that support whatever he wants to tell his clients. It's only in times like this when his polling and his advice contrasts against reality that his game is exposed.
But while I can see others in the campaign succeeding on putting a lid on Penn's public profile I can't imagine there's any way they would can him.
1) The one sight more hilarious than Mark Penn spinning the New Hampshire polls is the sight of Joe Lieberman's Ken Baer trying to HELP the Hillary campaign (see follow-on link in the article cited by Matthew above):
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"They [Hillary's operatives] need to make it very clear to all those states that Henry wanted to play in that Obama is not who he seems. It’s a very hard argument to make. It’s like trying to sell a minivan to a guy who comes in to a dealership looking to buy a Porsche – the sportscar may be sexy, but the minivan is responsible."
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hee hee hee
I myself think that drawing attention to the unfortunate width of Hillary's ass is not the way to go --but then I'm not a high powered campaign consultant.
Especially when you're talking about a 1994 minivan. Badly depreciated and with lots of wear and tear.
There really is only so much any campaign could do in the face of The Obama Phenomenon. Once large numbers of Americans and the national media decide your opponent is the next major world historical figure, it's hard to see what else there is to do. Anything you throw just turns into a pebble and bounces off. Sometimes the reasons for a loss don't mainly come down to what you did to lose; but are just grounded in who the opponent is and what they did to win.
Isn't it possible that people have in the end received a generally fair, comprehensive and accurate view of who these candidates are, and a lot simply prefer Obama to Clinton?
I heard that in person, Hillary is warmer and more personable than Bill, but she has never been able to show that. If that's true, then hiring Penn was akin to Britney shaving her head: Hey, I might as well go all in on the crazy! Penn is a union-busting maggot, unlike Shrum, who is just simply a retarded asshole.
People are so quick to diagnose evil these days. Surely banality is a better explanation for Penn.
The banality of evil is a myth and the woman who coined the phrase was simply too lazy to look beyond Eichmann's appearance and see the interior that was anything but banal.
The biggest source of evil is not banal people who were "just doing their jobs" nor is it the desire to do evil - most of the evil in the world is committed by people who fervently believe they are doing good.
I quote Marge Simpson: "I guess its true that one person really can change the world, but most of the time you probably shouldn't"
Antone wanting to vote for Billary is just plain nuts anyway .
Many aren't aware , but when she graduated from college , her final thesis topic was " The Benefits
of Socialism " and her first law client was the
Communist Party of Argentina . Part of that 35 years experience she flounts ?? ROTFLMAO !!
Mark Penn exemplifies the worst qualities of the old guard consultant culture, and as others mentioned, he basically crafts his data to fit what he wants to present to his clients. This isn't because he's worried about losing his job, but rather that he has preformed ideas about what will create electoral results and works from these, rather than what data and obvious trending is telling him. If you examine his record the pattern is obvious.
Guys like Penn are finally starting to fade away, but his long relationship with the Clintons and his prominent social status in DC (wife Nancy Jacobson throws some kickass parties) have helped him maintain a very undeserved guru status.
Penn, Shrum, and the rest of the Democratic engineers from the Clinton era need to start retiring to the editorial writing, punditry, and bitter, finger-pointing memoir drafting - some obviously have a head start on this. These guys have never proven that they actually help candidates, and we can attribute some pretty spectacular failures to their advisement.
And to Future4u - Hillary was also a Goldwater Republican at one point in her youth, so what? Obviously anybody that has been as helpful to the bottom line for drug and insurance companies as Hillary Clinton isn't somebody that we could reasonably qualify as a socialist.
Again, the only thing emptier than Hillary Clinton is her hyperbole; nobody's buying the rhetoric or her. Bill Clinton may have crowned himself the “comeback kid,” in another decade, in another millennium. Of course, that was also before he elected to school us on the vagaries of the word, is. When FBI Director Louis J. Freeh wrote, “The problem was with Bill Clinton, the scandals and rumored scandals, the incubating ones and the dying ones never ended. Whatever moral compass the president was consulting [Hillary] was leading him in the wrong direction. His closets were full of skeletons just waiting to burst out,” Mr. Freeh wasn’t kidding. I don’t know the exact date the Clintons flushed their compasses, but any right thinking person should feel demeaned at the thought of voting for Hillary. A vote is more than mere tacit approval; in this case it’s tantamount to complicity. So, I’m more than delighted the good people of the State of Iowa told Hillary to ride out on the horse (helicopter) on which she rode in, and I pray the good people of the State of New Hampshire will follow suit. I believe the good people of the State of South Carolina are already licking their chops. But if the guiding principle of history truly is irony, then savor: http://theseedsof9-11.com
Comments closed January 21, 2008.
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Heads in the Sand
What I found most striking about the clip of Hillary at the debate was its honesty. How often have we seen any real emotion or frustration out of her?
Penn has tried his best to turn her into a robot, a role she does not play well. In informal settings, she's much more charismatic and intelligent than the press would ever give her credit for. But Penn, in turning her into an automaton, has let her play into every negative stereotype out there about her.
Obama's game plan has been simple and effective: dig the hole of "the party establishment" and let Clinton fall into it. And Penn practically pushed her in.
Posted by ly_yng | January 7, 2008 8:40 AM