Ready to Lead?

Josh Green reports on the departure of Patti Solis Doyle from the Clinton campaign. On the second page, he speculates:

Rather than punish Solis Doyle or raise questions about her fitness to lead, Clinton chose her to manage the presidential campaign for reasons that should now be obvious: above all, Clinton prizes loyalty and discipline, and Solis Doyle demonstrated both traits, if little else. This suggests to me that for all the emphasis Clinton has placed on executive leadership in this campaign, her own approach is a lot closer to the current president’s than her supporters might like to admit.

Meanwhile, Steven Ybarra, a Latino superdelegate who's been backing Hillary Clinton, seems pretty pissed off that Clinton fired her campaign's top Latina.

Comments

The only reason I knew who PSD was before she got canned was because my wife got robocalled by the Clinton campaign emphasizing the PSD was the first latine to run a national campaign. Once you start pushing that line, it can kind of come back to haunt you when PSD starts getting painted as the first latina to run a national campaign into the ground.

Posted by BobJ | February 12, 2008 3:24 PM

"above all, Clinton prizes loyalty and discipline"

sound familiar?

that phrase should've been in bold, 24-pt type with a red flashing sign around it.

Posted by rob! | February 12, 2008 3:25 PM

I literally can no longer tell whether I'm reading Yglesias or Sullivan. If blogs had DNA... not only do share blog formats, body type, facial hair, etc., but now also blog content. This is so much fun!

Posted by Israel | February 12, 2008 3:28 PM

An emphasis on personal loyalty and secrecy is typical of political organizations that are held together by persecution complexes and conspiracy theories.

Posted by Dan Kervick | February 12, 2008 3:32 PM

Pretty effing sad that Ybarra seems to think a Latina who fucks up shouldn't get fired (and, God forbid, be replaced by a black woman!) and therefore no one should support Hillary. Like that crazy woman at NOW-NY who shouted "betrayal" when Kennedy endorsed Obama. This is one of Obama's appeals: he's beyond -- or at least trying to get beyond -- all this identity politics. It's sad to see how it lives on in so much of the Democratic Party.

Posted by Traven | February 12, 2008 3:34 PM

Man, that Ybarra character seems like a pretty huge jerk. "Latino superdelegates like myself . . . will have cause to pause." Is there any rational way to believe that she was let go because of her ethnicity? Was there any rational reason to keep her on in the same role, given the trouble the campaign has experienced? BobJ's point is fair, though.

Ugh.

As to Rob!'s point, if true, that is a darn frightening bit of info. But it's just one journalist's interpretation of things. Clinton may well have had every reason to believe that Solis Doyle was ready to step in and do great things.

Posted by Elvis Elvisberg | February 12, 2008 3:39 PM

This TNR article referenced by Green is also compelling stuff:

http://www.tnr.com/politics/story.html?id=75e41edb-784d-4f9a-ba6e-08cab93d09ae

Posted by evie | February 12, 2008 3:41 PM

I don't understand why MY posts Josh Green's idle and baseless speculation. Is it to show how useless and stupid such speculation is? Or is it to fire up the Hillary-haters who can then start repeating Josh's speculation as if it were pure unvarnished fact?

Time for a blogger ethics panel indeed.

Posted by Rob Mac | February 12, 2008 3:41 PM

I agree Ybarra's sentiments are ridiculous. But if BobJ's comment above about the robocall is true, then Clinton deserves whatever blowback she gets from the Latino community. You can't have it both ways.

Posted by right | February 12, 2008 3:42 PM

Wow just like how the Atlantic hires people based upon where they go to school rather than whether they actually know what they are talking about!

I like how its all Solis-Day's fault except Green even points out she was basically a glorified office manager. But that shows something or other that he can't really say except politicians like people to be loyal to them. And thats just bad or something.

Posted by Rob | February 12, 2008 3:46 PM

Rob Mac - take a chill pill. Lots of bloggers are linking to it because it's an interesting read. The Clinton campaign did dump their campaign manager, after all -- did you expect no stories to be written about it?

Posted by evie | February 12, 2008 3:52 PM

@Rob Mac: So, even though the guy's been doing some in-depth reporting on Clinton for two years now (including the GQ story that they pushed to have canned), it's "idle and baseless" speculation? On my planet, we call it "sharing an informed opinion."

Posted by moff | February 12, 2008 4:05 PM

The fact that the piece is garbage doesn't mean anything if its linked to! Green's point was that Clinton valued loyalty above competence I guess. So does he show how that cause her campaign to suffer? Nope! He just assumes it based on no evidence. The fact that Penn was the architect of the campaign makes no difference! Everything was Solis-Doyle's fault apparently! He even admits that Penn is in charge. Solis Day was bad at fundraising except for that $175 million she got. But she burnt through it all! (even though Penn was in charge). She lost Iowa! (even though this just in Iowa borders Illinois).

Amazing we have an entire piece about a terriblely run campaign but Penn doesn't really show up anywhere.

Posted by Rob | February 12, 2008 4:12 PM

To be fair, there is nothing wrong with prizing loyalty and discipline when choosing people to lead your own campaign. It is quite different when appointing, say, the head of FEMA when other people's lives are at stake. Let's not get ahead of ourselves.

Posted by MS | February 12, 2008 4:18 PM

Rob:

It seems clear from the article that Green was saying that PSD wasn't the only problem:

It’s important to emphasize that Solis Doyle was not the architect of the Clinton strategy. It was devised and agreed to by many of the campaign’s top staffers, and the candidate herself signed off on it. But in all my reporting and personal experience with the campaign, Solis Doyle probably embodied it more than anyone else. It’s not unfair that she lost her job; but it is unfair that no other senior staffers appear to be in danger of losing theirs.

Posted by BobJ | February 12, 2008 4:21 PM

I would normally agree that the reaction from some prominent hispanics to this (effective) firing is silly, something along Traven's line of "Ybarra seems to think a Latina who fucks up shouldn't get fired".

However, the Clinton campaigns has in advertising used Doyle's position within the campaign as a reason to vote for Clinton as recently a week ago! That she was not fit for the job was known before, and she had probably been sidelined already. They were promoting Doyle publicly to hispanics as a reason people should vote for Clinton even as they were getting ready to replace her. They waited until after Super Tuesday to reap the rewards, giving them a month between states with sizable hispanic voting blocs. Plenty of time to smooth over any ripples in hispanic support.

The maneuvering was transparent and - like a lot of Clinton shennanigins - unseemly without being explicitly unethical.

Posted by matthewcc | February 12, 2008 4:27 PM

@MS: Sure, but it's not unreasonable to infer that if you choose loyalty over competence when it comes to something you have such a vested personal interest in, you'll do it again later.

Posted by moff | February 12, 2008 4:27 PM

Without knowing any of the details of her day to day managment, it's pretty much impossible for *anyone* to successfully be a mom to kids 5 and 9 and manage a national campaign at the same time. A Wall St. Journal story in January had Solis Doyle weeping after Christmas while saying goodbye to her young family before flying back to Iowa. HRC should have shown better judgment, not necessarily in the person (I have no idea) but what it is possible for a woman to accomplish at various times in the cycle of life.

Please don't nobody take this as an anti-feminist post.

Posted by SMcC | February 12, 2008 4:31 PM

Of course it's anti-feminist SMcC. If Hillary is loyal and her campaign workers are also, this is somehow a failing on her part? Apparently you haven't been reading the campaign talk coming from the Obama camp and their loyalty to their candidate and each other, but then again thats okay, afterall its OBAMA!

Posted by AnnL | February 12, 2008 4:48 PM

Green's piece was informative, but this is one of the most glaringly incorrect things I've read in a long time:

Like Gorenberg, many of the new hard-money fundraisers are tech moguls who hail from a wealth center, Silicon Valley, that barely existed during Bill Clinton’s last run.

Bill's last run was in 1996, which was a year after the Netscape IPO and about 20 years after Oracle and Apple were founded. HP has been around since the 1930s and Intel since the late 60s. Maybe he meant "existed" as a source of campaign cash, but that's not really correct either.

Posted by pinson | February 12, 2008 4:52 PM

Um, loyalty and discipline are kind of important in a FREAKIN CAMPAIGN!!!!

Come on people. That is the biggest non-point I've seen in a while.

Posted by Eric Martin | February 12, 2008 4:55 PM

Um, loyalty and discipline are kind of important in a FREAKIN CAMPAIGN!!!!

Come on people. That is the biggest non-point I've seen in a while.

Posted by Eric Martin | February 12, 2008 4:56 PM

Hillary giveth, Hillary taketh away.

Speaking of giveth, when's the last time you figure Hill and Bill did the deed?

Posted by Larry | February 12, 2008 5:05 PM

so we have conspiracies and reliance on personal loyalty versus ambition attached to Axelrod's hope fetish. makes me glad to be a democrat
woohoo

Posted by this just in | February 12, 2008 5:29 PM

above all, Clinton prizes loyalty and discipline

Oh, shit. Not again.

Posted by urbino | February 12, 2008 5:43 PM

"Speaking of giveth, when's the last time you figure Hill and Bill did the deed?"

Obviously - nine months before Chelsea was born. That would be, what, 28 years ago?

No wonder Hillary is desperate for any kind of male attention, which she shows constantly.

She should call me. I'd take care of her needs.

Won't even cost her much...

Posted by Richard Steven Hack | February 13, 2008 5:51 AM

Hillary's campaign has blown a 30 point lead in the last few months. It was past time to fire somebody, and it seems like the campaign manager might be a good place to start.

And what nationality is Obama's campaign manager? Hillary obviously did not do this for racist reasons, the replacement is black.Who else has hired a latina in the first place? I mean they are really pissed that she fired a latina, so they will switch their ovte to someone who has ignored the hispanic vote completely until the last week. How stupid is that?

Hillary is trying to save her campaign and all of this nonsense that she should keep someone who is failing.

Posted by apishapa | February 13, 2008 12:21 PM

Very true apishapa, but it also shows how hollow Clinton's attempts to reach out to minority voters really are. She threw blacks overboard this campaign (and her husband tossed out the first black Surgeon General after Republicans said mean things when she spoke common sense) and then tried to get them back by blaming their economic woes on illegal Latino immigration. For her, racial politics is always a zero-sum game and I find that creepy.

Posted by Reality Man | February 13, 2008 4:15 PM