WP, E.J. Dionne: The Errors Haunting Clinton's Campaign

[DeepModem Mom]

The Errors Haunting Clinton
By E. J. Dionne Jr.
Tuesday, April 8, 2008; Page A19

....Clinton's surprise comeback in New Hampshire looks ironic in retrospect. Many attributed the victory to an emotional and revelatory moment in which Clinton choked up at a campaign event and declared: "This is very personal for me; it's not just political." Defying the false assumption that she was an unfeeling political automaton was one crucial element to Clinton's victory. Her win may have saved (Mark) Penn's job at the time. Yet, according to his critics inside the campaign, it was Penn who had resisted counsel that Clinton needed to show her human side.

Penn may also be the one and only political consultant who hurt himself by publishing a successful book in the course of a political campaign....(T)he book -- co-written by E. Kinney Zalesne -- underscored Penn's skepticism of large and overarching themes. "Grandiose" is one of Penn's preferred epithets, and he believes passionately in accumulating small subgroups in the electorate into a majority. His book describes more than 70 trend groups with pithy names such as "Modern Mary Poppinses," "Social Geeks," "Archery Moms," "Shy Millionaires" and "Numbers Junkies." One of Penn's groups, "Impressionable Elites," has proved to be mightily impressed with Barack Obama. When Obama started winning on the basis of a sweeping message of hope, inclusion and national unity, the merits of micro-politics came into question.

And Penn committed another sin that, in truth, affected the entire Clinton apparatus: believing that Obama would be trumped by Hillary Clinton's "inevitability" and that media messaging could overpower organization. This meant that the Clinton campaign was, to be charitable, underorganized....Obama's team is well known for its use of new technologies to raise money, engage volunteers and spread his gospel in unorthodox ways. Yet equally important has been Obama's own old-fashioned version of micro-politics. He built local organizations all over the country, especially in the overlapping groups of smaller states and those holding caucuses. He won most of the small states that voted on Feb. 5, the Super Tuesday primaries that the Clinton camp thought would secure her the nomination, and he swept the states that voted in the weeks immediately after. Much of Obama's current lead was amassed in that period.

Not all of these problems can be laid at Penn's feet. But he did come to symbolize a campaign that was much given to infighting and failed to understand the new energies unleashed in the Democratic Party by the reaction against George W. Bush. It did not grasp early enough how much politics has changed since the Clinton '90s. The post-Penn Clinton campaign has only a little time and a narrow window to make up for these mistakes.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/04/07/AR2008040702192.html?nav=most_emailed

[LisaM]

1. Yeah, and Gore ran a bad campaign too. Blah blah blah.

As long as we have voters who vote on the basis of a campaign and not the candidate, we will have problems. By all accounts, GWB ran a perfect campaign in 2000. Reagan out-campaigned Carter in 1980. That brought us two of our WORST presidents ever.

I refuse to cast my vote based on a campaign. Issues, please, and who could actually do a better job governing.

[John Q. Citizen]

2. If you can't organize supporters to turn out, how are you going to organize Senators to pass your

legislation?

How a person runs their campaign is a reflection on thier management style, their judgement, their ability to adjust and adapt.

[LisaM]

3. Really?

And that applies to George W. Bush exactly HOW?

[John Q. Citizen]

4. bush won his primary. That's the first skill you have to have to be president.

Someone should have told Hill.

[LisaM]

5. We'll have to agree to disagree, then

Some of the tactics he used to "win" his early primaries were suspect (not saying this is true of Obama) and those so-called skills have not carried over into his presidency.

Bad campaign or not, I think Gore would have made a better president.

[John Q. Citizen]

6. The problem with bush is not his skill but his sociopathic goals. He did almost everything he set

out to do.

He legailizes suspension of the constitution based on "faulty intelligence," whatever the hell that's supposed to be.

While unsuccessful in his frontal attack on SS, he has nonetheless set the stage for it's demise through huge unsustainable war debts, bank bailouts and corruption.

And he stayed out of jail for his whole 2 terms so far, and kept us in Iraq.

Gore ran a slightly better campaign, especially when he went more populous toward the end, which is why he won the popular vote. bush simply cheated in FL to win.

[Divernan]

8. Organization is the thresh hold requirement for a good president.

What they call "necessary but not sufficient". A good president has to have the administrative skills to promote worthwhile programs AND the political philosophy to put the welfare of the country ahead of his/her personal ambitions for wealth and power.

Reminds me of that leadership matrix with 4 cells re the psychology of organizations. On one axis you have intelligence; on the other axis you have energy levels/drive. This gives you four possible combinations:
(1) smart and lazy
(2) smart and industrious
(3) dumb and lazy
(4) dumb and industrious

The most damage is done by a leader who is dumb and industrious, i.e., working hard to fuck things up.

[tinrobot]

7. It's not the campaign, it's the candidate.

People tend to blame the campaign, but if you're selling a candidate the people don't want to buy, is that the fault of the campaign or the candidate?

Hillary has spent 20 years creating a strong image. That image is not going to change with a campaign. This year, people simply aren't buying what she's selling.

[Cha]

9. It's the candidate to start with but

bush was nothing and they pushed him through come hell or high water. So, our country is just lucky that hilary and bil went to mark penn and down hill from there.