Hillary Pollster Mark Penn: Bill Did Fundamentally Change The Country

So it's all about Bill's legacy? Doesn't Hillary have anything worth mentioning? :shrug:

http://tpmelectioncentral.com/2008/01/hillary_campaign_bill.php

Hillary Pollster Mark Penn: Bill Did Fundamentally Change The Country
By Greg Sargent - January 25, 2008, 1:23PM

The Hillary campaign is moving today to engage Obama more directly over the now-notorious comments about the GOP and Reagan. TPM's Eric Kleefeld reports that on a conference call arranged by the Hillary camp, Hillary pollster Mark Penn said:

"President Clinton put this country on a fundamentally different path. He changed the fiscal nature of this country, he changed the international relations of this country…He left the country on a totally different trajectory where people felt they were prepared for the 21st century."

The argument, obviously, is meant to engage not just Obama's "party of ideas" comment, but also his claim that Reagan (and JFK) changed the country in ways that Bill didn't. This, and the radio ad released yesterday in which Bill openly praised his own performance as President, suggest that the Hillary campaign is hoping to turn Obama's comments into a direct argument about the 1990s.

I'm not sure which way the increased emphasis on Bill's presidency cuts -- whether it makes voters nostalgic for the successes of the Clinton presidency, or whether it makes voters more receptive to Obama's "turn the page" argument -- but it seems like this is the tack that the Clinton camp has chosen.

Tax cuts for the rich obliterated the surplus, Kyoto was junked, regulations that he had written into law were routinely undone and then came 9/11.

He left no political legacy for the party to stand on.

His horny teenaged boy incident rendered himself useless to Al Gore.

The proof of all this is how hard he's fighting right now. He knows better than anyone how skimpy the legacy is. He wants to repair the damage and, even more important, prevent another Democrat from showing he can do much better.

Oh, and, by the way, fuck you, Bill.

:thumbsup:

Just below the surface lie the sticky wicket issues surrounding the Clintons
that will argue for Obama's message of turning the page.

Isn't it Time for Mark Penn to Leave Burson-Marsteller?
Posted November 12, 2007 | 11:18 AM (EST)


My colleague at The Nation, Ari Berman, has done more than any journalist to shine some light on how pollster-strategist Mark Penn, head honcho at PR giant Burson-Marsteller, and perhaps the most important figure in Hillary Clinton's campaign, poses a real dilemma for the candidate. Penn heads a firm that has represented everyone from union busters to big tobacco, and more recently Blackwater. (According to a Marsteller spokesperson, it was a subsidiary, BKSH & Associates, run by GOP operative Charlie Black, which helped Erik Prince prepare for congressional hearings after his employees killed civilians in Iraq).It would seem difficult to find a more controversial client than Blackwater but Penn's firm has just been retained by Spin Master.

Who is Spin Master? It turns out that Spin Master distributes Aqua Dots, a toy that was recalled last week because it contains a glue ingredient that when ingested is broken down by the body to make GHB, the "date rape" drug, which can cause unconsciousness and even death. (The Consumer Product Safety Commission says the number of children sickened by Aqua Dots has risen from two to nine in the past week.)

Penn has repeatedly stated that he has no direct contact with controversial clients like Blackwater or unionbusters. But what about the good old-fashioned American principles of responsibility and accountability -- principles which his candidate likes to invoke on the campaign trail? As Ari Berman has pointed out, the dilemma for Clinton is that Penn's firm represents many of the interests whose influence she has vowed to curtail. But as kids get sick from poisonous toys, how can Clinton keep in her corner, as her chief strategist, a man who has even limited involvement with a firm like Burson-Marsteller? Isn't it time that Clinton ask Penn to choose: my campaign to make this a safer country or a PR firm which has too many clients undermining that agenda?

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/katrina-vanden-heuvel/isnt-it-time-for-mark-pe_b_72206.html

"In '06, with Penn at the helm, the company gave 57% of Campaign Contrib to GOP"



Polling Czar



After the 1994 election, Democrats had just lost both houses of Congress, and President Clinton was floundering in the polls. At the urging of his wife, he turned to Dick Morris, a friend from their time in Arkansas. Morris brought in two pollsters from New York, Doug Schoen and his partner, Mark Penn, a portly, combative workaholic. Morris decided what to poll and Penn polled it. They immediately pushed Clinton to the right, enacting the now-infamous strategy of "triangulation," which co-opted Republican policies like welfare reform and tax cuts and emphasized small-bore issues that supposedly cut across the ideological divide. "They were the ones who said, 'Make the '96 election about nothing except V-chips and school uniforms,'" says a former adviser to Bill. When Morris got caught with a call girl, Penn became the most important adviser in Clinton's second term. "In a White House where polling is virtually a religion," the Washington Post reported in 1996, "Penn is the high priest."

Penn, who had previously worked in the business world for companies like Texaco and Eli Lilly, brought his corporate ideology to the White House. After moving to Washington he aggressively expanded his polling firm, Penn, Schoen & Berland (PSB). It was said that Penn was the only person who could get Bill Clinton and Bill Gates on the same line. Penn's largest client was Microsoft, and he saw no contradiction between working for both the plaintiff and the defense in what was at the time the country's largest antitrust case. A variety of controversial clients enlisted PSB. The firm defended Procter & Gamble's Olestra from charges that the food additive caused anal leakage, blamed Texaco's bankruptcy on greedy jurors and market-tested genetically modified foods for Monsanto. PSB introduced to consulting the concept of "inoculation": shielding corporations from scandal through clever advertising and marketing.

-snip

Burson-Marsteller is hardly a natural fit for a prominent Democrat. The firm has represented everyone from the Argentine military junta to Union Carbide after the 1984 Bhopal disaster in India, in which thousands were killed when toxic fumes were released by one of its plants, to Royal Dutch Shell, which has been accused of colluding with the Nigerian government in committing major human rights violations. B-M pioneered the use of pseudo-grassroots front groups, known as "astroturfing," to wage stealth corporate attacks against environmental and consumer groups. It set up the National Smokers Alliance on behalf of Philip Morris to fight tobacco regulation in the early 1990s. Its current clients include major players in the finance, pharmaceutical and energy industries. In 2006, with Penn at the helm, the company gave 57 percent of its campaign contributions to Republican candidates.

-snip
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20070604/berman

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/

I'm relieved that Mark Penn has again inserted himself into the Clinton-Obama brouhaha. Because after so much squabbling between two people both of whom I actually like, it's comforting to have a consummate bulls--t artist like Penn take the stage so I can pillory him with no misgivings or cognitive dissonance.

I'll say this, the real tragedy of Hillary's comeback win in New Hampshire is that it saved Mark Penn's job.

--Josh Marshall

Penn and Robert Johnson advocating for Clinton, why is she getting a free pass for picking such distasteful people?