Micro Mark (Penn)

Hillary Clinton’s Svengali, Super Micro-Trend Pollster Mark Penn: ‘People Misunderstand,’ He Says Campaign ‘Never About the Small Things,’ And, ‘If We Lose, I Will Take My Share of the Responsibility’...

Mark Penn thinks that people have the wrong impression about him, and about Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign.

“I think that people misunderstand,” he said in a 45-minute phone interview Monday evening.

He said that the emerging story line—that his poll-obsessed, microtargeting approach had produced a plodding, uninspiring campaign—was a bum rap. “The campaign has been about big goals, health care, ending the Iraq war, new energy, the future,” he said. “There was a misunderstanding that this campaign was about small things. It never was. If anything, the Obama campaign has microtargeted constituencies.”

Fair or not, the fate of Mrs. Clinton’s campaign—she’s heading into the last-chance March 4 primaries with her lead dwindling in Ohio and gone in Texas—is going to be seen as a referendum on Mr. Penn, who has arguably been the Clintons’ most influential adviser for more than a decade. As the campaign squares up to the possibility of an ignominious end on March 4, Clinton loyalists have left no doubt about who they consider to be the responsible party.

http://www.observer.com/2008/micro-mark