Mark Penn Steps Down as Clinton's Top Strategist
Mark Penn, the chief strategist for Hillary Clinton's campaign and the
CEO of worldwide PR
company Burson-Marsteller, has stepped down from his post with the Clinton
campaign following
the news that he met with the Colombian government to secure congressional
approval of a trade
agreement that Clinton vocally opposes. Penn met with the Colombian
ambassador in his capacity
as the head of Burson-Marsteller, which had a one-year, $300,000 contract
with Colombia. The
conflict of interest raised by the meeting was a black eye for Clinton,
who has adopted strongly
populist rhetoric in key primary states.
In a press release Sunday evening, Clinton campaign manager Maggie
Williams said Penn and his
polling shop will continue to do some work for the campaign:
After the events of the last few days, Mark Penn has asked to give up
his role as Chief
Strategist of the Clinton Campaign; Mark, and Penn, Schoen and Berland
Associates, Inc. will
continue to provide polling and advice to the campaign.
Geoff Garin and Howard Wolfson will coordinate the campaign's
strategic message team going
forward.
Penn was (and still is) an unpopular figure. He was disliked by wide
swaths of the progressive
movement because he ran a multinational cor****ation that had its fingers
in a lot of dirty pots.
Burson-Marsteller and its many subsidaries have lobbied for and
represented tobacco companies,
oil companies, Union Carbide, and Blackwater, among other clients. Penn
became a particulary
easy target for criticism when it was revealed Burson-Marsteller
specialized in busting unions.
Penn was no more liked within Hillaryland, for both personal and
professional reasons. His
imperious nature and unwillingness to accept responsibility for failure
rubbed many Clinton
loyalists the wrong way. His reliance on data and his insistence that the
campaign need not
"humanize" Clinton produced mounting criticism with each primary loss.
Blind quotes from top
Clinton aides criticizing Penn are usually an easy get for Wa****ngton's
top journalists.
There was always something unsettling about having a PR guru as the brains
of a political
campaign. At its best, politics is the best way to make a positive impact
on the most lives. At
its worst, it is pure PR, a game of messaging and spin that seeks only to
put politicians in
power and keep them there. There was never a sense that Penn was motivated
by something greater
than victory. Morever, Penn stripped politics of its ability to inspire
and raise the country
up: he prefered to dice the electorate into minute groups that could be
targeted with specific
messaging. This approach was laid out in Penn's book Microtrends, and
though the book was not
well received, no one can deny Penn's approach has worked. Penn served as
a pollster for Bill
Clinton in his 1996 reelection bid and as a key adviser for Hillary
Clinton in her 2000 and 2006
Senate races. Winning efforts all.
And that's why, despite all the animosity aimed at Penn, he had never
gotten the boot. He helped
the Clintons win, and they were loyal to him. So was the Colombia incident
really that damaging?
Or were frustrations with Penn growing as Clinton's chances for the
nomination grew slimmer,
finally culminating in Sunday's message from Maggie Williams?
The answer may lie in Garin, who was hired as a second pollster a few
weeks ago. Penn has rarely
had to share duties, and speculation immediately rose after Garin was
hired that he might
eventually usurp the embattled Penn. The Columbia incident may have
provided Clinton with the
op****tunity to finally seal a decision that was weeks in the making.
Garin seems custom made for the job. From his bio:
In politics, Mr. Garin has a well-earned reputation for helping
candidates win in difficult
cir***stances. In 2001, Mr. Garin’s strategic research helped Mark Warner
win the governor****p
in Virginia, despite the state’s strong Republican leanings. Mr. Garin has
directed the polling
and created winning campaign strategies for many of the leading Democrats
serving in the U.S.
Senate, including Dick Durbin, Dianne Feinstein, Chuck Schumer, Russ
Feingold, Robert C. Byrd,
Jay Rockefeller, Patrick Leahy, Max Baucus, Kent Conrad, and Byron Dorgan.
The Obama campaign rarely, if ever, made an issue out of Penn and his very
un-progressive work
with Burson-Marsteller, and now it will never have that op****tunity. It
may have been aware that
as long as Penn was in command, its bid for the nomination sold with a
soaring message of hope
for the country would be opposed by a campaign run by a man who in many
ways embodies the phrase
"smallness of our politics."
http://www.motherjones.com/mojoblog/archives/2008/04/7874_mark_penn_steps.html
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Finally, the campaigns of 1793 and 1794 set Clausewitz on the path of
recognizing war as a
political phenomenon. Wars, as everyone knew, were fought for a purpose
that was political,
or at least always had political consequences. Not as readily apparent
was the implication
that followed. If war was meant to achieve a political purpose, everything
that entered into
war — social and economic preparation, strategic planning, the conduct of
operations, the
use of violence on all levels — should be determined by this purpose, or
at least accord
with it. Even though soldiers had to acquire special expertise, and
function in what in some
respects was a separate world, it would be a denial of reality to allow
them to carry on
their bloody work undisturbed until an armistice brought their political
employer back into
the equation. Just as war and its institutions reflected their social
environment, so every
aspect of fighting should be suffused by its political impulse, whether
this impulse was
intense or moderate. The appropriate relation****p between politics and war
occupied
Clausewitz throughout his life, but even his earliest manuscripts and
letters show his
awareness of their interaction.
The ease with which this link — always acknowledged in the abstract —
can be forgotten in
specific cases, and Clausewitz’s insistence that it must never be
overlooked, are
illustrated by his polite rejection toward the end of his life of a
strategic problem set by
the chief of the Prussian General Staff, in which every military detail of
the opposing
sides was spelled out, but no mention made of their political purpose. To
a friend who had
sent him the problem for comment, Clausewitz replied that it was not
possible to draft a
sensible plan of operations without indicating the political condition of
the states
involved, and their relation****p to each other: ‘War is not an independent
phenomenon, but
the continuation of politics by different means. Consequently, the main
lines of every major
strategic plan are largely political in nature, and their political
character increases the
more the plan applies to the entire campaign and to the whole state. A war
plan results
directly from the political conditions of the two warring states, as well
as from their
relations to third powers. A plan of campaign results from the war plan,
and frequently - if
there is only one theater of operations - may even be identical with it.
But the political
element even enters the separate components of a campaign; rarely will it
be without
influence on such major episodes of warfare as a battle, etc. According to
this point of
view, there can be no question of a purely military evaluation of a great
strategic issue,
nor of a purely military scheme to solve it.’
Everyman’s Library, 1993 ISBN: 0679420436 On war /by Clausewitz, Carl
von, 1780-1831.
Knopf, 1993. From the introduction by Peter Paret, Pg7
_____________________________________________________________________
The U-2 is a jet-powered reconnaissance aircraft specially designed to fly
at high altitudes
(i.e., above 70,000 ft [21 km]). It was used during the late 1950s to
overfly the Soviet
Union, China, the Middle East, and Cuba; flights over the Soviet Union,
the primary mission
for which the plane was designed, ended in 1960 when a U-2 flown by CIA
pilot Gary Powers
was shot down over the Soviet Union. This event was a major political
embarrassment for the U.S.
http://www.espionageinfo.com/Te-Uk/U-2-Spy-Plane.html
Soviet Prime Minister Khrushchev's reaction to the overflights which
were discovered
just before a summit conference in Paris with President Eisenhower: "It
was as though the
Americans had deliberately tried to place a time bomb under the meeting" .
. ."How could
they count on us to give them a helping hand if we allowed ourselves to be
spat upon without
so much as a murmur of protest?" The only solution was to demand a formal
public apology
from Eisenhower and a guarantee that no more overflights would take place
. . .
But the apology Khrushchev was looking for would not come. Despite
having trespassed
on the Soviet Union for the past four years with scores of flights by both
U-2's and heavy
bombers, the old general still could not say the words, it was just not in
him. . . A time
bomb had exploded, prematurely ending the summit conference. . .
Back in Wa****ngton, the mood was glum. The Senate Foreign Relations
Committee was
leaning toward holding a closed door investigation into the U-2 incident .
. . In public,
Eisenhower maintained a brave face. He "heartily approved" of the
congressional probe and
would 'of course fully cooperate,' he quickly told anyone who asked. But
in private he was
very troubled. For weeks he had tried to head off the investigation. His
major concern was
that his own personal involvement in the overflights would surface,
especially the May Day
disaster. Equally, he was very worried that details of the dangerous
bomber overflights
would leak out. The massed overflight may in fact, have been one of the
most dangerous
actions ever approved by a president.
pg. 51-55 ~Body of Secrets; Anatomy of the Ultra Secret National Security
Agency
James Bamford
----------------------------------------------------------------------
"Let me give you a word of the philosophy of reform. The whole history of
the progress of
human liberty shows that all concessions yet made to her august claims,
have been born of
earnest struggle. The conflict has been exciting, agitating,
all-absorbing, and for the time
being, putting all other tumults to silence. It must do this or it does
nothing. If there is
no struggle there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom and
yet depreciate
agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground, they want
rain without
thunder and lightening. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its
many waters."
"This struggle may be a moral one, or it may be a physical one, and it may
be both moral and
physical, but it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a
demand. It never did and
it never will. Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and
you have found out the
exact measure of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them, and
these will continue
till they are resisted with either words or blows, or with both. The
limits of tyrants are
prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress. In the light of
these ideas, Negroes
will be hunted at the North, and held and flogged at the South so long as
they submit to those
devilish outrages, and make no resistance, either moral or physical. Men
may not get all they
pay for in this world; but they must certainly pay for all they get. If we
ever get free from
the oppressions and wrongs heaped upon us, we must pay for their removal.
We must do this by
labor, by suffering, by sacrifice, and if needs be, by our lives and the
lives of others."
http://www.buildingequality.us/Quotes/Frederick_Douglass.htm
Frederick Douglass, 1857
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