"Good Campaign"

Obama revamped campaign tactics

by Lisa Van Dusen

In a post-primary analysis in the New York Times the other day, erstwhile Clinton strategist Mark Penn ended an exploration of what went wrong with the kicker, "And sometimes your opponent just runs a good campaign."

From the day after Barack Obama won the Iowa caucus and attention was turned to the differences between his campaign and the frontrunner's, it was clear that he and Hillary Clinton were running very different operations.

Those differences were apparent in the candidates' own public pronouncements, in the messaging from their surrogates, in their spending decisions, in their street-level tactics and, most of all, in the apparent difference of opinion in the two campaigns on the exact location of the lines you just don't cross.

For the past three decades, at least since television became a major factor and especially since the 24-hour cable cycle has taken over, there has been a list of unofficial campaign rules that cover a multitude of landmines from Supreme Court appointments to pancakes: Never wear hats, never operate heavy machinery, never, ever wear a hat while operating heavy machinery, never play a game that isn't fixed, never come out against a tax break, all fast food is political . . . there are about 30 more.

These have been compiled through so many self-immolations that they've become gospel. Obama has not only knowingly broken many of them (most recently, he recklessly flouted that no-pancake rule, based on Gary Bauer's unceremonious triple-gainer off a stage in New Hampshire in 2000 while trying to catch a rogue, airborne flapjack), he has done it with such grinning disregard for the rule book and everything it represents that million-dollar-a-month consultants such as Penn must be wondering what the weather is like in some of the friendlier emerging democracies.

In South Carolina, the Obama campaign sent white foreigners door-knocking in black working-class neighbourhoods and black volunteers into wealthy white areas. They put Upper East Side socialites and Harvard students on the phone banks to sell an African-American candidate to rural white Southerners wary of outsiders. They refused to buy votes and pack rooms with "street money," especially for the black community, despite the fact that that's how it's always been done.

Obama won South Carolina partly because the old-style, tactical campaign he was up against was derailed by those tactics when Bill Clinton started pushing race buttons. It didn't happen in every state, but at other key points along the way, there were moments when one campaign behaved the way campaigns have always behaved, only this time it backfired.

The superdelegates who put Obama over the top last week were declaring a preference for a new kind of politics even, or maybe especially, as practitioners of the old kind. They know that to millions of young people who've become involved this time, the new kind is the only kind they know, and the old kind already looks like history.

Hillary Clinton did run a good campaign, according to the old rules, and if it hadn't worked, especially in certain states, she could not have stayed in so long or finished so impressively.

Of all the explanations for what went wrong, from the neglect of caucus states to the deliberate aura of incumbency to the huge consultant bills, it may be that the changing definition of "good campaign" covers most of them.

Obama-Backing Unions Demand Hillary "Sever All Ties" With Penn

By Greg Sargent - April 11, 2008, 1:46PM

Change to Win, the coalition of unions backing Obama, is upping the pressure on the Hillary campaign to dump Mark Penn, releasing a new statement demanding that she "sever all ties" with Penn and launching an online pressure campaign designed to force her to do just that.

The latest statement ties Penn directly to "triangulation," a word folks obviously associate with the Clintons, and blames it directly for the decline of living conditions for the American worker.

“"High-priced consultants like Mark Penn who shape our laws to suit their clients are poisoning our political system and robbing voters of their faith in our democratic process," the statement says. "Triangulation has been the strangulation of the hopes and dreams of American workers...There is no place at the table for union-busters."

There's no evidence that the Obama campaign is orchestrating Change to Win's continuing pressure on Hillary, but it's obvious that Penn, and Hillary's refusal to get rid of him once and for all, is a gift that keeps on giving for the Obama camp.

The question, though, is whether this latest broadside represents enough of an advancement of the assault on Penn to merit significantly more coverage.

Separately, The Huffington Post has some brutal quotes about Penn from Hillary-ite Paul Begala.

Full Change to Win statement after the jump.

THERE IS NO PLACE AT THE TABLE FOR UNION-BUSTERS

WASHINGTON, D.C. – The following is a statement from Change to Win executive director Greg Tarpinian calling on Sen. Clinton to sever all ties with Mark Penn after media reports revealed he is still participating in campaign strategy calls, conducting polling, dispensing advice and managing Clinton's direct-mail operation, despite being stripped of his “chief campaign strategist” title. Change to Win launched an online campaign today calling on Sen. Hillary Clinton to sever all ties with Mark Penn.

“We must break from the politics of the past. High-priced consultants like Mark Penn who shape our laws to suit their clients are poisoning our political system and robbing voters of their faith in our democratic process. Triangulation has been the strangulation of the hopes and dreams of American workers. Mixing the people’s work with corporate work might be ‘good for business,’ but there is no question it’s bad for America’s workers.

“Consultants whose firms counsel and countenance corporations or countries that deny the basic human rights of workers should have no place in any campaign seeking the support of America’s workers. Mark Penn, while serving as an advisor to the Clinton campaign contracted to advocate for a job killing trade agreement with a nation that is the most dangerous place in the world for trade unionists. To make matters worse, his firm also advocates for a corporation notorious for aggressively suppressing the rights of workers. There is no place at the table for union-busters.

“These back room dealings remind us yet again of the choice voters have in this election: bringing people together to change this broken system and forge new solutions that help restore the American Dream for America’s workers or the status quo where Washington insiders buy their way into the policies they want.”

Clintons' Squabbles: Not Funny

Fri, Apr. 11, 2008

Opinion

HILLARY CLINTON'S "Bill Clinton Problem" is a joke that has become not so funny. In a debate earlier this year, Mitt Romney got a huge laugh line when he said, "The idea of Bill Clinton back in the White House with nothing to do is something I can't imagine." Hillary Clinton answered with a joke of her own when she assured David Letterman, "Well, look, you know, in my White House, we will know who wears the pantsuits."

Yet, it was reported this week that Bill Clinton has worked hard to promote the Colombia Free Trade deal, while Sen. Clinton says she has worked to oppose it. Yes, this is the same Colombia pact that cost her top campaign adviser his job when it was revealed that he was working on the side for the Colombian government.

According to the Huffington Post, Bill Clinton received $800,000 to take part in a speaking tour sponsored by Gold Service International, a Colombian outfit that supports the free trade deal. Just after, his Clinton Global Initiative announced millions of dollars of investment, including in Colombia. Just last year, Clinton participated in an event for, and received an award from, Colombian President Uribe - a man whose human and labor rights record is so odious that Al Gore backed out of an environmental event when he found out Uribe would be there. The award Clinton received was described as ABC News as part of a PR effort to "counter [Colombia's] negative image among Washington Democrats."

The Clinton campaign's press secretary, Jay Carson, offered a petulant response, telling Ben Smith of The Politico, "Yawn."

Excuse me if this problem doesn't make me as drowsy as Sen. Clinton's spokesperson. I would expect, and even welcome, Bill Clinton and Hillary Clinton arguing about policy behind closed doors. It can only help the senator form a more informed, wise position on critical issues. But, this is not a marital squabble.

At some point, when Sen. Clinton claims she was trying to defeat the Colombian Free Trade Deal, Bill Clinton must have told her that he was planning on making some money to promote the deal, and helping the Colombian President deflect attention from his offensive record. What did Sen. Clinton tell the former president at that point?

Either she told him that it was OK, and she didn't mind him working to pass the trade deal, which calls into question just how opposed to this policy proposal she really is. Or, she told Bill Clinton that she didn't want him doing that, and he did it anyway. Certainly, during this campaign, Bill Clinton seems to have gone off on his own, saying and doing things that Hillary Clinton later had to apologize for. The former president's crass comparison of Barack Obama and Jesse Jackson, in South Carolina, comes to mind.

Whatever the case, this is problematic. In this critical time, we cannot afford to have a president who says one thing, while the first spouse publicly works towards an opposite end. Sen. Clinton must better explain to voters why the former president goes off on his own like this, and how she will better control him if she should find herself in the Oval Office.

This is now serious, and answering this question with jokes won't cut it anymore.

Flavia Colgan is a member of the Daily News editorial board. Check out her blog, CitizenHunter, at www.citizenhunter.com.

The Clinton-Colombia Connection: It Goes Back a Long Way

Arianna Huffington

4/08 A week ago, if you'd asked most people to say the first thing that popped into their heads when they heard the word "Colombia," you might have gotten: "Bogotá," "coffee," "cocaine," or maybe even "kidnappings."

Today that list would probably be led by "Clinton."

First came chief strategist Mark Penn's "reassignment" following the embarrassing revelation of his side job advising the Colombian government on how to promote a trade agreement loudly decried by the candidate whose campaign has so far paid him and his firm $10,800,000 for his input.

Then came word that Clinton campaign spokesman Howard Wolfson also has financial ties to Colombia via his involvement the Glover Park Group, a company founded by Clinton administration alum Joe Lockhart that has also been advising the Colombian government.

And, of course, there is the Whitman sampler of Colombian goodies gobbled up by Bill Clinton, including: $800,000 in speaking fees from a Colombian pro-free trade agreement group; a "Colombia is Passion" award bestowed by Colombia's president Alvaro Uribe (who honored the former president as an "unofficial minister of tourism"); and a sweet Colombian oil field deal for a company Clinton pal Frank Giustra's investment firm had advised. Giustra is the mining magnate who has donated $31 million to Clinton's charitable fund, and whom Bill personally introduced to Colombian President Uribe (Giustra is the same guy Clinton helped land a uranium deal in Kazakhstan, but that's a Clinton story for a different blog post).

The Clinton-Colombia connection doesn't stop there -- and involves much, much more than a spousal disagreement over how free our trade with the Colombians should be.

As President, Bill Clinton had initiated Plan Colombia, a $1.3 billion aid package to escalate the war on drugs in Colombia. I wrote a number of columns in 2000 and 2001 outlining the very troubling nature of this Clinton-backed initiative. I'll include the links at end of this post if you want a fuller history, but here is a quick refresher:

At the time, Colombia was in the midst of a four-decades long three-way civil war pitting the Colombian army, which has one of the worst human-rights records in the Western hemisphere, against leftist rebels and right-wing paramilitary groups, both largely funded by the drug trade (a war that continues to this day). Despite the abject failure of America's misguided war on drugs -- with the hundreds of billions spent on it failing to curtail drug use -- Clinton decided that another billion or so directed to Colombia would do the trick. The Colombian military's extensive ties to right wing death squads be damned! In fact, Clinton signed a waiver of human-rights provisions that Congress had imposed on the Colombia drug-war package.

The story of how Clinton helped funnel all that money to Colombia is a textbook case of much that is wrong with the way our political system operates.

For instance, to avoid resistance from those who did not believe this was the best way to spend over a billion in taxpayer dollars, the Clinton administration decided to introduce the Colombian aid as part of a larger emergency-spending package -- bundling the potentially controversial measure with proposals to provide $2.2 billion for relief from natural disasters, and $854 million for military health care. It's an old legislative ploy designed to squelch debate and force politicians to vote for wasteful -- or even terrible -- measures just because they don't want to be painted as being against God, country, and disaster relief.

The Clinton White House also used a poll commissioned by a very interested party to help provide cover for the Colombian initiative. Here's how it worked: defense contractor Lockheed Martin commissioned Democratic pollster Mark Mellman to conduct a poll which concluded that 56 percent of registered voters would support $2 billion being spent on "tracking planes to be flown in drug-producing areas." (I'm surprised the poll didn't also conclude that 82 percent of those 56 percent would be especially overjoyed if those planes were "Lockheed Martin P-3 tracking planes.") Lockheed's smart bomb hit its mark: five months after this manufactured mandate was presented to the president, he proposed the $1.3 billion package, confident that he could shake "the will of the people" (or at least the 800 people Mellman offered his tailor-made questions to) in the face of opponents.

And, it wasn't just the White House playing the Beltway game. When there is that much money involved, you know that lobbyists will be right in the center of the action. In the case of Plan Colombia's river of cash, among those involved were Clinton confident Vernon Jordan, whose law firm was hired by the Colombian government to stump for it on the Hill. And lobbyists for Occidental Petroleum, BP Amoco, and (flashback alert!) Enron, all of which had business interests in Colombia, were also greasing the wheels for the aid bonanza - as were lobbyists for a pair of helicopter manufacturers looking to get a cut of the substantial slice of the money earmarked for the purchase of drug-war fighting choppers.

This is how our government worked then - and how it continues to work today, with Washington insiders moving back and forth between lobbying firms, campaign staffs, and government positions, and former presidents raking in big bucks making speeches while acting as facilitators to sweetheart private deals and advocating for public ones.

And this is how our government will work in the future as long as we elect candidates whose campaigns are run by the likes of Mark Penn and Howard Wolfson -- and advised by the likes of Bill Clinton. And that holds for the likes of Charlie Black, Rick Davis, and the bevy of other lobbyists guiding John McCain's campaign as well.

Follow the stink rising off the Clinton/Colombia connection and you'll arrive at the very large slagheap that American politics has become.

Arianna Huffington is the co-founder and editor-in-chief of The Huffington Post, a nationally syndicated columnist, and author of eleven books.

Colombia: The Drug War's Latest Perverse Priority - March 13, 2000

Commissioned Polls: Is That Your Final Answer? - April 20, 2000

The Drug War And Colombia: Deny And Escalate - May 11, 2000

Bush And Gore On Colombia: Ask Us No Questions, We'll Tell You No Lies - August 28, 2000

Colombia Chopper Wars - June 26, 2000

Random Acts Of Leadership - February 15, 2001

Good Morning, Colombia - July 16, 2001

A Victory for Decent Americans

We need to remember that Clinton top strategist Mark Penn, now revealed for the shady character he is, is and has been a darling and trusted confidant of both Hil and Bil for over a decade.

To believe that he acted without their complete knowledge and approval is folly.

The dark and negative tone of Hillary's campaign, while executed by Penn, still reflects the core of her values - and willingness to win at any cost.

It is good to have Penn gone. Next up? It's time for the master puppeteer, herself, to go.

Important to note that Penn is not really gone - he's still being kept around as Hil's pollster. Let's here it for loyalty!

zjm
Penn Is Out As Clinton's Chief Strategist

UPDATE -- 8:24 p.m.

While the news of chief political strategist Mark J. Penn's abrupt departure from Hillary Rodham Clinton's campaign this evening took many in the Democratic political world by surprise, talk soon turned to how the move would impact the overall message of the campaign. One Democratic consultant, granted anonymity to speak candidly, predicted "a less combative campaign and more focused on her strengths."

Penn was a major influence in Clinton's decision to focus on her toughness and readiness to be commander in chief during the campaign. He was one of the guiding forces behind the now-infamous "3 am" telephone ringing at the White House ad that sought to raise questions about Sen. Barack Obama's (Ill.) ability to lead the country in the event of a national security crisis. That ad ran in the lead-up to Ohio's March 4 primary, which Clinton won by double-digits.

As recently as last week, Penn continued to push that line of attack on a campaign conference call with reporters. "Part of the vetting process is who is ready to be commander in chief," he said, before adding: "We believe Senator Clinton is the most ready to be commander in chief."

The shakeup was announced this evening in a statement issued by campaign manager Maggie Williams.

"After the events of the last few days, Mark Penn has asked to give up his role as Chief Strategist of the Clinton Campaign," Williams said. "Mark, and Penn, Schoen and Berland Associates, Inc. will continue to provide polling and advice to the campaign." Sources close to Clinton insist Penn stepped aside and was not forced to relinquish his position.

The events Williams is referring to is a meeting between Penn and the Colombian government as he sought to help them negotiate a bilateral free trade agreement between themselves and the United States. Clinton is on the record in opposition to the plan, and, Penn was forced to issue a quick apology once the news of his meeting was reported. Several labor unions called for Penn to be fired from the campaign, however, and it appears as though Clinton took the moment to rearrange her political operation.

Stepping into the void left by Penn are Geoff Garin, a pollster and partner in Garin-Hart-Yang Research, as well as communications director Howard Wolfson -- a longtime Clinton loyalist who has been intimately involved in each of the New York Senator's campaigns.

The removal of Penn from his coveted slot atop the Clinton political team marks the end of a tempestuous tenure for the pollster. Penn's relationship with the Clintons goes back to former President Clinton's 1996 reelection race. Penn also served as the political strategist for Hillary Clinton's first run for Senate in 2000 and played the same role in 2006 as the New York Senator prepared to run for president.

Penn enjoyed the Clintons' trust and loyalty as evidenced by the fact that he remained in the catbird's seat even as the presidential campaign saw its original plan dashed by the candidacy of Sen. Barack Obama (Ill.). Penn occasionally clashed with other members of Clinton's inner circle but the candidate always seemed unwilling to lessen his role within her orbit. (For more on Penn, make sure to read the piece penned by the Post's Anne Kornblut.)

Penn's demotion is the latest in a series of moves made by Clinton as she seeks to convince voters and superdelegates that she remains in contention for the Democratic nomination. Campaign manager Patti Solis Doyle and deputy campaign manager Mike Henry left the staff earlier this year.

Stories of staff shuffles rarely penetrate the average voter's consciousness but Penn's decision may be an exception as he was an extremely high profile member of Clinton's team. We'll be monitoring that fallout as it develops. Stay tuned.