Master of (Hillary's) Domain, continued...

Been doing a little more digging and reading about Mark Penn, Hillary's chief campaign strategist, and think some more of this deserves exposure. He's really like Hillary's Karl Rove. 

According to the article "Spinning Hilary Centrist" from The Nation I linked to last night, his first firm Penn, Schoen & Berland:

...defended Procter and Gamble's Olestra from charges that it caused anal leakage, blamed Texaco's bankruptcy on greedy jurors and market-tested genetically modified foods for Monsanto. Penn invented the concept of "inoculation," in which corporations are shielded from scandal through clever advertising and marketing. Selling an image, companies realized, was as important as winning a legislative favor...

The company he is now CEO of, Burson-Marstellar: 

The firm has represented everyone from the Argentine military junta to Union Carbide after the 1984 Bhopal disaster in India, in which thousands were killed when toxic fumes were released by one of its plants, to Royal Dutch Shell, which has been accused of massive human rights violations in Nigeria. B-M pioneered the use of pseudo-grassroots front groups, known as "astroturfing," to wage stealth corporate attacks against environmental and consumer organizations. It set up the National Smokers Alliance on behalf of Philip Morris to fight tobacco regulation in the early 1990s. Its current clients include major players in the finance, pharmaceutical and energy industries...

...Yet despite occupying such a divisive place in the Democratic Party and outsized role in the corporate world--and despite his company's close ties to Republican political operatives and the Bush White House--Penn remains a leading figure in Hillary's campaign, pitching the inevitability of her nomination to donors and party bigwigs...Politically, his presence means that triangulation is alive and well inside the campaign and that despite her populist forays, Hillary won't stray too far from the center. "Penn has a lot of influence on her, no doubt about it," says New York political consultant Hank Sheinkopf, who worked with Penn in '96. "He's not going to let her drift too far left."

An article online at Bloomberg.com inquires whether these corporate ties might be a conflict of interest:

Clinton campaign spokesman Howard Wolfson said Penn is currently working only with Microsoft Corp., a longtime client, and on the election campaign, although he's free to handle and solicit other clients. "The real question from the campaign perspective is whether Senator Clinton is comfortable with what Mark is doing, and the answer to that is yes, unequivocally,'' Wolfson said. Penn's internal blog -- several months of which were obtained by Bloomberg News -- suggests that all along he has been working with multiple clients. He downplayed his role in Clinton's presidential campaign, saying he is "not a policy adviser, I'm a communications adviser.'' Others say he's the most powerful figure in the campaign, and an April 30 Washington Post profile said he "has become involved in virtually every move that Clinton makes.''

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Master of (Hillary's) Domain

So I just read Josh Green's revealing look inside the firing of Clinton's campaign manager, and the disconcerting truth that emerges is how much Hillary values loyalty over performance, a characteristic I find disturbingly echoes our current president.

But it also led me to discover this NY Times profile, which is a key article to understand the main "strategist" who is running Hillary's campaign - Mark Penn. He's the guy out making genius comments to the press over this last week. He also is CEO of a PR firm, Burson-Marstellar, that does "perception management" - spinning positive PR for tobacco companies, Saudi Arabia after 9/11, or military contracting firm Blackwater after recent controversies. Apparently created a strategy of setting up faux grassroots organizations for corporate clients to attack environmental or consumer groups. Wonderful stuff. A Hillary loyalist, he has with her during her first Senate campaign in 2000, when this article was written (after joining the Clinton cadre during the '96 election). It is incredibly illuminating even now (especially to those who wonder what I mean when I complain everything the Clintons do is calculated and focus grouped down to the word!):

For years now, aides to the Clintons have insisted that they use polls not to decide which policies to support but to learn how to persuade others to share their positions -- not to follow, in other words, but to lead. It's not true. They use polls for both purposes, and that is why to understand the state of American politics and government you need to know about Mark Penn. For the Democrats who have used market-tested ideas and language to redefine the party, he is the man who writes the questions and interprets the answers. By adding and then dividing you, turning you into a percentage and stamping you with a label, he serves as your conduit to power. And theirs.

You should know this about Penn: For the decade before Dick Morris brought him and his partner Doug Schoen to work for the Clintons, Penn served mostly corporations like Texaco and Avis. Along with corporate marketing techniques, it was a particularly corporate view of reality that he put in the service of the Clintons. He thinks about voters not just in terms of ideology -- with the cold war over, who really has one anymore? -- but in terms of lifestyle and attitude, the sitcoms they watch and the music they listen to. He searches for the little spaces where politics and government might fit between work and trips to school and soccer games.

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Clinton Campaign Puts Foot In Mouth, Swallows Leg Whole

The Clinton campaign has been out disparaging Obama's recent string of wins:

Bill Clinton, for instance: "the caucuses aren't good for her. They disproportionately favor upper-income voters who, who, don't really need a president but feel like they need a change."

Of course, besides being on the surface absurd (upper income voters don't need a president - huh? isn't this a democracy?), its also patently untrue. The caucuses Obama won in Iowa, he won all income brackets, not just upper income, and has also won lower income brackets in contests in Virginia, Missouri, etc. Also, the Clintons aren't exactly throwing back "wins" in the Nevada or New Mexico caucuses.

Then her chief strategist, PR wonk Mark Penn, posed the question this way: “Could we possibly have a nominee who hasn't won any of the significant states -- outside of Illinois?” Chief Strategist Mark Penn said. “That raises some serious questions about Sen. Obama.”

So now the Clinton campaign is telling states like Colorado, Missouri, Washington, Minnesota, Virginia, Maryland, Maine, Delaware, Iowa, and Connecticut that they don't matter, cos they didn't vote for her. Way to ingratiate yourself for the fall election.

Anyhow, these ludicrous arguments have even insulted and infuriated Clinton supporters like Talking Points Memo's Josh Marshall:

...good spin is clever and forward-leaning pitches of actual realities, facts. The word in the sense we use it today actually came into being in the early 90s and to a great degree around the '92 Clinton campaign, which had such mastery in its practice. But this Clinton campaign has been doing it in a weird parody mode. Not sharp 'spins' on favorable realities, but aggressive pitches of complete nonsense. So now you have Penn successively saying caucus wins don't really count, small state wins don't really count, medium state wins don't really count, states with large African-American populations don't really count, all building up to yesterday's gem [the above Penn Quote]..."

Atrios:

Like I said yesterday, all this "spin" bugs me. Not because I'm being spun, but because spin should make your candidate look good, not bad. Mark Penn's pronouncements, and others from the campaign (he's not the only one), give me that watching-an-Ari-Fleischer-press-conference feeling. It's the utter contempt for everyone not on board with the candidate, an attempt to just assume them all away.

And this isn't even broaching the "screw the voters, I'm gonna get nominated by super delegates" maneuvering currently going on.

But check Kos's "I Voted for Obama Hence I Don't Matter" post for a rundown of all of this plus the superdelegate strategizing that lies behind it.

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The BS Starts Again

I was starting to dig and respect Hillary's campaign a lot more, but then they start this kinda thing all over. This from the Clinton campaign after their win in Massachusetts:

One of the biggest surprises of the night is Massachusetts. Despite the fact that Senators Ted Kennedy and John Kerry were actively supporting and campaigning for Obama, Hillary Clinton won the state. Despite the fact that the Governor of Massachusetts endorsed Obama, Hillary Clinton won the state. Despite the fact that Obama visited Massachusetts just last night, Hillary Clinton won the state. This is a strong victory and shows that Hillary Clinton has strength in places where Barack Obama was expected to win.

Sounds good. But its not true. Yes, Obama had the support of Kerry and Kennedy - for the last week (ok, Kerry for a week longer). But Massachusetts was a stronghold of Clinton support - if Obama had won there it would've been a HUGE upset. Look at this:

That's the poll trends over the past YEAR. She was up as much as 20 points in polls a week ago. You can see Obama closed the gap to about 10 points in the last week - pretty amazing in and of itself, but in no way was he expected to win. Again, spin is one thing, but trying to manipulate the public by hoping they are not paying close attention and spinning an expected win as a come from behind triumph? C'mon. 

NOTE: Just saw this nearly identical post at AmericaBlog "Massachusetts was not an upset."

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Do you really want to be even comparable to the Swiftboaters?

Interesting rundown/fact check on some of the Clinton campaign's attacks, also points out how hawkish some of her early positions were, and the contortions she goes through to deny that. From Bloomberg:

In recent debates and in an appearance on NBC television's ``Meet the Press,'' she has flagrantly misrepresented her own and her opponents' positions or statements...Hyperbole is a staple of American political campaigns. Senator Hillary Clinton has crossed the line into distortion....Although every candidate makes misstatements, the various fact-check organizations and detached analysts usually find the Clinton campaign in a league of its own. It's not the depths of the duplicity; compared to other abuses, like the Swift Boat attack lies against John Kerry in 2004, these are benign. The problem is there is a pervasive pattern at a time when voters are clamoring for authenticity.

Check it!
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