The Clinton Memos

by hilzoy

I've read Josh Green's new article in the Atlantic, and the various internal Clinton campaign memos that were released with it. I don't have any particular desire to rehash any of the arguments from the primary, so I won't. I read them mostly because when you've followed a story closely, it's fascinating to get access to what some of the parties involved were actually thinking. Some of it (e.g., the dysfunction in the Clinton campaign) wasn't news, and some of it I've already noted.

When I read the whole collection, though, what struck me was just how bad Penn's advice was. I don't mean how odious some of it was -- e.g., the idea of attacking Obama as having a "limited" connection to "basic American values." I mean how bad it was, as advice.

Throughout the memos, Penn fails almost entirely to address, or even to notice, any of Clinton's potential weaknesses. When he does list "obstacles", as he does here, a lot of them are things that do not reflect badly on Clinton -- e.g., a hostile national press, the fact that Edwards has been working Iowa hard, the idea that no one will elect a woman President, and so forth. Others are not so much obstacles as tasks: Clinton, Penn says, has to attract the base of the party and convince people that she's electable, but he doesn't present any reasons why this should be particularly difficult for her to do. There is only one that might in any way reflect badly on her -- the idea that she's a phony. And on that score, Penn's advice is just to present her New York record and "avoid anything that even smells like a position change." There is no acknowledgement at all that anything Clinton has ever done might explain why people think she's a phony. It's as though this were just an inexplicable erroneous belief that people had gotten from nowhere, and that needed only facts to refute it; not a sign of genuine vulnerability.

Likewise, Penn completely fails to notice several obvious issues. Nate Silver has already noted his failure to address the need to try to limit Obama's share of the black vote. Besides that, his early memos say discuss how much support Clinton has without so much as acknowledging the rather obvious possibility that her standing in the polls reflects name recognition, and the need to do something to translate early popularity into sustained support. (He does say that the campaign should try to "energize" supporters, but he never seems to be aware of just how soft early support for a frontrunner often is.) Throughout the memos, really obvious problems like these simply are not addressed. It's as though Clinton's candidacy were taking place in a completely static environment, and all she had to do was figure out what pose she should strike to present herself to the voters from the best possible angle.

When Penn talks about Obama, he makes two complementary mistakes. On the one hand, he assumes that the problems with Obama's candidacy are just obvious. To pick one example:

"Obama represents a serious challenge because at least for the moment he represents something big -- an inspirational movement. But the more you analyze what he says, the more you wonder what is behind the hype. No big original ideas. No big accomplishments for others, only for himself. (...) His weakness is that if voters think about him for five minutes they get that he was just a State Senator and that he would be trounced by the big Republicans."

On the other, he does not seem to entertain the possibility that similar concerns might be raised about Clinton, or in general anticipate questions that might be raised about her. It's as though the campaign as a whole has come to a consensus that Obama is just an empty suit, while Clinton is experienced, competent, compassionate, and ready to lead; and so Penn can just take these points for granted. He never entertains the possibility that someone might ask, for instance, what Clinton's "big accomplishments" were, or whether being First Lady constituted experience, or anything of the kind.

When I started going through Obama's and Clinton's Senate records, I had no idea what I'd find on the Clinton side. I knew that I had not heard of any great Clinton accomplishments, but that didn't mean much: since the media tends not to cover what I'm interested in, I hadn't heard of most of Obama's accomplishments until I started looking. For all I knew, there might have been whole rafts of accomplishments out there. I do not want to rehash the question whether Clinton or Obama had more accomplishments, but I do want to say this: Clinton's record was not so overwhelmingly superior to Obama's that her campaign could take her superiority on this score for granted. Likewise, the answer to the question 'does being First Lady, and being a member of several part-time boards and commissions, obviously count as the sort of experience that prepares someone to be President?' is not so obvious that the campaign should not have been prepared for that, if they were going to raise Obama's experience as an issue. Nor is it obvious that she trumps him in the 'big ideas' or 'accomplishments for others' categories. And yet Penn never suggests that attacking Obama on these points might be problematic for Clinton.

In general, if you had only Penn's memos to go by, you'd assume that Clinton was obviously superior to Obama in every way, and that all the campaign really needed to do to win was to display her virtues and his faults while avoiding any obvious pitfalls. Even if that were true, I would think that a good advisor would try to game out possible avenues of attack and prepare for them. But in the case of Clinton it was not true. (Here I don't mean to say that she was worse than Obama, or had more vulnerabilities; only that she had some.) And that makes Penn's memos hard to understand. You never serve your bosses well when your advice to them flatters rather than challenging them. And you really don't serve them well when you collude with them in underestimating their opponents.

Comments

[Sebastian]

The essential problem with Penn's advice as it comes across in the memos is that he reinforced her weaknesses. He constantly bought into an unhelpful presecution complex that looks especially silly when you are accusing other Democrats of engaging in it.

[Nell]

Josh Green, no final 'e'. Typo in first appearance of 'Pen[n].'

Penn's unwillingness even to acknowledge, much less correctly estimate, the impact of Clinton's vote for the war on the party's primary voters is unsurprising, given his politics. That the entire press and pundit corps join in is the remarkable part.

[Eric Martin]

When I read the whole collection, though, what struck me was just how bad Pen's advice was

Not just Pen, but Penn too ;)

[Peter]

Mark Penn would be a much better adviser if he had read Machiavelli with understanding. The same goes, mutatis mutandis, for his boss.

[aimai]

For all the talk that all the media, as well as the clinton campaign and the mccain campaign, make about Obama as an empty suit and a celebrity it is really the McCain and Clinton campaigns that have been run as though name recogntion and a "monicker" approach to policy "she's a woman!" "he's a vet! and a maverick to boot!" were the be all and end all of politics and politicking. From my perspective as an early edwards supporter, far to the left of Obama, what is noteworthy about the Obama campaign is its workmanlike approach to politics. First, you get elected. Then, you do stuff. Both HRC and McCAin are running/were running celebrity ads where they put their identity out there and figure people will vote for that based on some kind of raw identification. I think there is/was plenty of raw identification with Obama among some of his supporters (among whom I count myself) but he has left it very much open to the supporter to see themselves in his campaign rather than insiting that there's a right kind of person who naturally prefers obama to other kinds of politicians.

At any rate, Penn's advice sounds exactly like the advice and observations of the press, which consistently mistook name recognition for real support and that imaginary real support for some kind of political movement. At the sam etime, HRC refused to *lead a movement* because she refused to stand for anything other than "competence" without defining what that competence was to be about. People who had been watching, especially watching her career in the senate, found her to be not lacking in accomplishments but lacking in fighting spirit. When she promised to be more of a fighter than Obama, she convinced people already supporting her. but anyone paying attention? not so much.

aimai

[hilzoy]

You know, I do actually try to proofread...

Which, I suppose, just makes the results that much sadder.

[Nell]

Your percentage of typos/misspellings is vanishingly low, especially considering the volume of output.

[Eric Martin]

Your percentage of typos/misspellings is vanishingly low, especially considering the volume of output.

Indeed. That is why they stand out.

On a scale of 1-10, with Yglesias being a 10, I'd put Hilzoy at a 1.5.

[Aubrey]

One of Publius's best post was back at his Legal Fiction blog. The post was titled "These Guys Are Good" and pointed out the expertise with which Lincoln Chafee's folks were holding off his primary challenger, and more broadly, the grasp the the GOP had on this aspect of campaigning. The gist was summed up in this timeless maxim:

Amatuers talk strategy, professionals talk logistics.

This wisdom applies to Barack vs. Hillary. Granted, Penn's job probably had little to do with the nuts-and-bolts, boots-on-the-ground aspect of the game. However,the overall lack of emphasis on organizing and infrastructure in Hillaryland is underscored by this collection of documents...of which nothing of the sort is mentioned.

I am almost certain that if we were given access to Obama's internal documents, Plouffe, Axelrod, and all of the key players would at least reference the logistical component, and the importance to their overall strategy.

[Hogan]

Granted, Penn's job probably had little to do with the nuts-and-bolts, boots-on-the-ground aspect of the game.

No, but if he can't even take account of it in his strategy proposals, then why are you paying him $13 million? Think how many experienced field organizers you could hire with that money. Would you rather have that, or Penn's strategic advice?

[Warren Terra]

I really, really hope a lot of that $13 million was genuinely going to low-paid workers (and computers, etc.) making phone calls and sending out junk mail, because Penn's vacuous-praise-interspersed-with-bile approach was one of the monumental election losers of all time, and the story of that kid sold his bike and computer games to help buy Penn another vacation home after Clinton had already lost still pains me.

Obama had to run a nearly flawless campaign, and Clinton had to commit blunder upon blunder, for Obama to win. But Obama had an ace up his sleeve: Clinton had hired Mark Penn and a bunch of semitalented narcissistic hacks who were more interested in accumulating praise, power, and of course cash (remember Wolfson's $0.10/second 24/7 pay scale?) than in, you know, doing their jobs. Hungry and dedicated is a much better option. If Bill Clinton had run in 1992 with the kind of self-obsessed bloated greedheads hiswife and intended successor ran with this year, we'd have forgotten the name Clinton by now.

Of course, the argument could be made that Bill did run with precisely that sort of crew - in 1996, when that bunch of monkeys, or any other, were good enough to win re-election. And then the confirmation bias kicked in ...

[bedtimeforbonzo]

"I don't have any particular desire to rehash any of the arguments from the primary, so I won't."

Agreed.

I wonder, however, if things would have turned out differently if Penn and Axelrod had switched sides.

[Anderson]

Penn's problems are inseparable from Hillary's problems. She was the boss.

What the primaries reminded me of, was something I'd almost forgotten -- the Clintons' lack of character. Which continues to be on display, as we hear the whinging about her delegates at the convention, etc.

I'd rather be ruled by characterless Democrats than by Republicans, on the whole, but still: it's a sad sight to see people who're otherwise so gifted, but so sadly lacking.

[togolosh]

Penn is one of the reasons I was pulling for Obama. Clinton had surrounded herself with the usual DLC Made Guys and they delivered what that crowd always delivers - rubbish. I dislike a lot about Obama, and Clinton is in many ways a better political match for me, but if the way she would govern the country would be at all like the way she ran her campaign, we really would be better off in the long term with McCain.

[Model 62]

Amatuers talk strategy, professionals talk logistics.

This wisdom applies to Barack vs. Hillary.

Let's hope it also applies to Obama vs. McCain.

[Steve LaBonne]

The ancient Greeks knew everything you need to know about Penn and the Clintons:
Hybris------->nemesis.

[Steve LaBonne]

The ancient Greeks knew everything you need to know about Penn and the Clintons:
Hybris------->nemesis.

[Steve LaBonne]

The ancient Greeks knew everything you need to know about Penn and the Clintons:
Hybris------->nemesis.

[Steve LaBonne]

The ancient Greeks knew everything you need to know about Penn and the Clintons:
Hybris------->nemesis.

[Steve LaBonne]

The ancient Greeks knew everything you need to know about Penn and the Clintons:
Hybris------->nemesis.

[Steve LaBonne]

Jeez, really sorry about that. Problems trying to go back a page, and I had no idea it was resulting in repeat posts.

[ThatLeftTurnInABQ]

Steve,

I'm not sure if I have this right, but I think I read somewhere that "Hybrinemesis" is an ancient proto-Indo-European word meaning "to hit the back button too many times". The Greek root hyper- (over, above, too much) is derived from it (most likely via consonant substitution and letter order exchange), thus forming our modern word hypertext (too much text).

:-)

[Nell]

We've all done it, Steve.

But most top out at three.

Five might be.... hubris.

;>

[Deborah]

I'm more and more convinced that someone was looking at the timing of a) the Atlantic story and b) the announement of who's speaking when and similar convention details, and decided on the timing of Obama's vacation. The Olympics helped too.

Without the Georgian thing (which with the Olympics is filling up news), domestic news would be focused on the twin spectacles of Hillary's merry plans for a huge Greek Drama Catharsis at the convention (and what about Steven Colbert's supporters' catharsis?), and the memos which remind everyone of just how much Greek drama a Clinton can generate, making her absence from the ticket a release. And stopping John McCain from squeaking above any folds.

[EarBucket]

Hiring Mark Penn as chief strategist looks like hiring Marc Ambinder. Sort of useful if you want to know what the conventional wisdom currently is, but utterly useless if you want to predict what things are going to look like down the road.

His stroking of Clinton's ego is unforgivable in a strategist, too. You have to be willing to give your candidate the cold, hard truth, even if it's unpleasant for them to hear. He should have told Hillary something to the effect of "Hey, a lot of people don't like you very much. You come across as calculating and phony. We need to work on that." Instead, he told her "The media is painting you as calculating and phony. That's so unfair. We should tell everyone how the media is picking on you."

[Gary Farber]

"Nate Silver has already noted his failure to address the need to try to limit Obama's share of the black vote."

I tried to figure out what you were linking to, but you linked to the blog, generically. What you apparently want to link to is this post.

[Gary Farber]

"I am almost certain that if we were given access to Obama's internal documents, Plouffe, Axelrod, and all of the key players would at least reference the logistical component, and the importance to their overall strategy."

You don't mean "logistics," actually. As a metaphor, I get it, but it's not actually logistics at all. How Obama has engaged in moving workers about, and having sufficient fuel, etc., isn't terribly relevant.

[Gypsy Man]

It's time for McCain to rev up the attack machine and start talking about all those questionable characters in Obama's background. People like Rev. Wright, and Father Pfleger who make Obama look like what he is--dangerous and extreme.

I love the expression coined by www.notwrightforamerica.com that Obama is not WRIGHT for America. McCain should go with it!

[Micheline]

Gypsy Man,

Obama's record negates Rev. Wright and Father Phleger and besides they are not running for office.

[cleek]

how many McCain points have you earned today, Gypsy Man ?

[Hogan]

How Obama has engaged in moving workers about, and having sufficient fuel, etc., isn't terribly relevant.

GOTV operations are very much about making sure that properly trained people are where they need to be and have the tools to do what they need to do. Transportation, supplies, communication, intel, even food deliveries. Maybe you don't need to build all those systems from the ground up, but you need to understand the ones that exist. If the Obama campaign hadn't taken that stuff very seriously, they would never have gotten past Super Tuesday.

[LFC]

Obama's record negates Rev. Wright and Father Phleger and besides they are not running for office.

Correction, McCain's record negates Rev. Wright and Father Phleger. We've got Hagee, Parsley, his smoochie with the late Jerry Falwell, and now a fundraiser with Ralph Reed. Oh, yeah. That's quite a stellar cast of cronies ya' got there, Johnnie.