It Wasn't Me

Mark Penn on why the Clinton campaign failed:

While everyone loves to talk about the message, campaigns are equally about money and organization. Having raised more than $100 million in 2007, the Clinton campaign found itself without adequate money at the beginning of 2008, and without organizations in a lot of states as a result. Given her successes in high-turnout primary elections and defeats in low-turnout caucuses, that simple fact may just have had a lot more to do with who won than anyone imagines.

Now, Times readers are an educated bunch, but only a fraction will fully comprehend the subtext here. Penn, of course, was the head of the Clinton campaign until April, but in his telling, he was just an "outside message advisor" all along. So when he writes that the message wasn't the problem, he's exonerating himself, and when he points to the money and organization people, he's blaming Patti Solis Doyle and Harold Ickes. Self-serving as it is, this is an entirely predictable view for him to hold -- all the more so because Penn previewed this strategy months ago, when he told the Observer pretty much the exact same stuff.  (Penn, always on message, even used some of the same turns of phrase.  Then: "[E]very schoolchild knows that she is 'ready on day one.'" Now: "Even schoolchildren got the message that Mrs. Clinton was ready to be president on Day One.") But it's also clearly wrong, since all of these parts of the campaign are intertwined: The money and the organizing were clearly problems (as was the record), but you have to have money to organize, and you have to have a compelling message to raise money.

It's no surprise that Penn, having presided over the implosion of a campaign that was supposed to be a lock a year ago, would point fingers. His reputation is in tatters, and quite apart from any personal umbrage he may take, his reputation is his key business asset. I'm also not surprised that Penn would be less than forthright about his interests in an op-ed.  My question is why the Times is playing along.

Comments

[Corvus9]

I think when people talk about Liberal Elitists, they really are trying to reference people like the New York Times, who really seem to be Elitists of a Liberal persuasion. And as Elitists, they really have no problem printing whatever dreck Mark Penn feels like writing. After all, he is a very important pollster and political strategist.

Has anyone else noticed that Penn looks like a Vogon? It really creeps me out how much he looks like he should be torturing us with his poetry right now.

[justathought]

Nobody cares what he looks like, it was his strategy that ill served Hillary Clinton's campaign.

[Trevor J]

The Times has its problems, but if I was running a paper and the guy who makes Bob Shrum look crafty wanted to publicly hang himself with his own words, I'd run it too.

I don't think the Times is trying to help him clear his name. This is the same paper that's also running a detailed top-of-the-fold piece examining the collapse of the Clinton campaign that slices Penn neatly. It has the beautiful detail of Penn leaving campaign HQ early the night of the PA primary because no one would talk to him. Lovely.

[low-tech cyclist]

Having raised more than $100 million in 2007, the Clinton campaign found itself without adequate money at the beginning of 2008

Well, Mark, how the fuck did that happen? That was far more than any previous campaign had raised prior to the election year, and not significantly less than Obama's campaign had raised. Yet they had money to play everywhere, and you guys didn't.

That's not the complete explanation of why you guys lost, but it was a pretty big fuckup, and one of the major contributing factors. Yet you gloss over it in a single phrase.

But then there's what you said about message:

The conventional criticisms of Mrs. Clinton’s campaign are these: she had no message; she ran just on experience; she should have shown more of her warmer side; she was too negative; President Clinton’s campaigning hurt her; and she presented herself as inevitable. It is amazing she got any votes at all.

So let’s take on a few of the myths. Even schoolchildren got the message that Mrs. Clinton was ready to be president on Day One. As a result of her campaigning and ads, people saw her as a strong commander in chief, a good steward of the economy and a champion for people who needed one.

That certainly sounds to me like running on experience, without a strong message. Like it or not, Mark, people don't want to hear something that general in challenging times. They want to hear how it applies to the particular challenges they and their country face.

Her campaign plans were bold: universal health care, universal preschool, new retirement accounts, a strategic energy fund.

The only particularly bold plan of this group was universal health care - and other than a vague promise to accomplish that before she left office, she wasn't going there until John Edwards forced her to put up or shut up.

And of course, you don't mention the war. Like it or not, this was the big one - Hillary supported going to war in Iraq, and never acknowledged that it was a mistake, 4000 American lives and hundreds of thousands of Iraqi lives later. And Hillary's withdrawal plans were always vague: she said she'd start withdrawing troops pretty quickly, but never promised to finish any earlier than the end of her Presidency.

America - not just Democrats, but America broadly - wants out of this war. Hillary was on the wrong side of this issue, from beginning to end. People noticed.

[Matt Weiner]

I feel that a post entitled "It Wasn't Me" should contain a link to the video.

[Ankush]

Matt W: I was this close to ripping Josh Levin off and titling the post "The Shaggy Defense." Alas, it was his phrase, and his use of it is about as apt as one could come up with.

[po]

Money was the problem?!? She was inevitable and during her time of inevitability he admits she raised at least $100 million, but then states she lacked sufficient resources in 2008 . . . where did that $100 million go? And why did you let it go there?

[MR Bill]

The sooner the Democrats get out of the spell of the DLC types, the Penns, the Carvilles, the triangulating 'smart' guys, the better. Obama's great appeal to me is as a game changer..

Even the frequently odious Joe Klein call it "Hilarious" and says "It takes a certain amount of--well, the proper word escapes me, but it exists in a realm somewhere beyond chutzpah...for Mark Penn to write that the real problem with the Clinton campaign was that it didn't raise enough money. Of course, the three words missing from the sentence are "to pay me." It doesn't occur to Penn that the reason why Clinton didn't raise enough money was because she was running an anachronistic, Penn-driven, poll-driven campaign."
http://time-blog.com/swampland/

[daveinboca]

Penn basically is saying that Hillary was experienced & therefore an Entitlement candidate whose message was not as important as her qualifications. She might have done better had she not blown her money on a guy who now calls himself a "message advisor" who previously called himself the Chief Campaign Director.

Penn is the new Shrum. Only more expensive.

[Joe Klein's conscience]

Does anyone know if Gordon Brown has fired Penn. I remember he had hired Penn's firm a month or two ago. No wonder why Labour is in deep shit.

[Sir Charles]

I'm put in mind of an old comedy routine by David Frye who did a great Nixon impression (actually I think his only talent) -- where he has Nixon accepting "responsibility" but not the blame for Watergate. As Frye/Nixon notes -- "people who are responsible keep their jobs; people who are to blame lose them."

The notion of this corporate clown trying to point the finger at others -- particularly when so much of the money wasted in the campaign went to him -- is laughable. Hopefully this is the death knell for him in Democratic politics, which I am old fashioned enough to think should be reserved for actual Democrats.