I have said that the problem with Hillary Clinton is not so much Hillary Clinton, but the crowd she runs with. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a better (albeit, unintentional) explanation of this than in Anne Kornblut’s profile of Clinton’s pollster, Mark Penn. Excerpting the profile does it an injustice. You kind of have to read the whole thing to have the totality of it seep into your bones and inform your brain.
Let’s start with Penn’s influence on Ms. Clinton:
If Clinton seems cautious, it may be because Penn has made caution a science, repeatedly testing issues to determine which ones are safe and widely agreed upon (he was part of the team that encouraged Clinton’s husband to run on the issue of school uniforms in 1996).
If Clinton sounds middle-of-the-road, it may be because Penn is a longtime pollster for the centrist Democratic Leadership Council whose clients have included Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman (I-Conn.).
If Clinton resembles a Washington insider with close ties to the party’s biggest donors, it may be because her lead strategist is a wealthy chief executive who heads a giant public relations firm, where he personally hones Microsoft’s image in Washington.
And if some opponents see Clinton as arrogant, her campaign a coronation rather than a grass-roots movement, it may be because of the numbers wizard guiding her campaign and the PowerPoint presentations he likes to give on the inevitability of his candidate.
Safe, pro-corporate, and arrogant…and that is just for starters. Consider Penn’s pro-Likud pedigree.
Penn started his polling business with Schoen with the 1977 New York mayoral candidacy of Edward I. Koch…
Penn gained his foreign policy expertise working on numerous campaigns overseas, especially in Israel. In 1981, he and business partner Doug Schoen helped reelect Menachem Begin, one of the most right-wing prime ministers in the country’s history, and emerged with a new outlook on the Middle East…
His client list includes prominent backers of the Iraq war, particularly Lieberman, whose presidential campaign Penn helped run in 2004…
Penn has deep roots in the national security wing of the Democratic Party, along with other centrist Democrats — some of them Jewish and pro-Israel, like Penn — who saw the merits of invading Iraq before the war began.
Finally, let’s look at how Penn makes a living.
Today, from a sleek 12th-floor office just off Thomas Circle, Penn manages both the strategy of the Democratic presidential front-runner and a multimillion-dollar corporation as worldwide chief executive of Burson-Marsteller, a 2,000-employee public relations firm. The job is the latest iteration of the lucrative corporate work that Penn and Schoen began in the 1980s, at the same time they were making their names as political pollsters, and that put them in the company of a new generation of business-minded Democratic consultants.
Among their clients over the years were AT&T, Eli Lilly, Texaco and Microsoft. Their specialty was corporate research and positioning — figuring out, for example, how AT&T could outflank competitor MCI by targeting uncommitted customers, the business equivalent of seeking out swing voters. While some Democratic rivals criticized the crossover work, suggesting that Penn had sold out or worse, the polling firm expanded rapidly, with Penn and Schoen adapting corporate models to the political sphere and vice versa.
Here you can see the fundamental problem with Clintonian politics. The Clintons rely on pollsters like Dick Morris (who has no discernable soul) and Mark Penn (whose idea of clear-headed foreign policy is shaped by Menachem Begin and Joe Lieberman). I don’t minimize the heroic efforts Bill Clinton made to achieve peace in the Middle East, but his overall foreign policy vision for the region was deeply flawed (as evidenced by the Clintons basic, if equivocal, support for Bush’s excellent adventure in Iraq).
On economic matters, the Clintons pursue a straight-forward pro-corporate agenda, emphasizing free-trade. And, yet, the Clintons manage to pull the wool over the eyes of the very people in the Democratic Party that are least represented by these policies.
Penn’s theory of the 2008 race has always been that after two tumultuous terms under Bush, the electorate will want change — but not too much change. Clinton offers a perfect mix, Penn believes. She inherently represents change, as a woman, without being unfamiliar or untested, thanks to her many years in Washington.
Penn did not anticipate that another Democrat might come along with a similar ability to fit that bill — as supporters of Obama, who would be the first black president, believe he can — but he says Clinton has another advantage in her ability to appeal to the underprivileged. Penn believes, and independent surveys confirm, that she outperforms other Democrats among lower-income voters, especially members of a family of four making less than $75,000 a year.
“She has a very, very strong base among the Democratic primary voters — first and foremost among voters who have real needs, people who may not have health care, people worried about losing a job, people who know someone serving in the war, people in the working and middle class, people whose lives really depend upon having the kind of champion and advocate that Hillary represents,” Penn said.
Given how radical the Bush regime is, it would be fatuous to suggest that there is no difference between Bushism and Clintonism. There are enormous differences…chiefly, that the Clintons operate within the traditional confines of American politics (in both the good and bad sense).
But if you want progressive politics that deemphasizes America’s role as international policeman and re-emphasizes people that have ‘real needs, people who may not have health care, people worried about losing a job, people who know someone serving in the war, people in the working and middle class’, then Hillary Clinton is the last Democrat you should support.
