Behind the scenes at Clinton HQ
With the focus of the political world on November, and what’s going to happen over the next 84 days, it’s tempting to downplay revelations about the inner workings of the Clinton campaign. If only the revelations weren’t so interesting, I probably would.
I should note at the outset that more than two months later, the explanation for why the Clinton campaign came up short hasn’t changed. My friend Tom Schaller explained this very well yesterday: “[Clinton’s team] underestimated Obama, they didn’t have a plan for winning delegates in caucus states, and they were caught flat in the period immediately following Super Tuesday.” Howard Wolfson’s protestations notwithstanding, these are the reasons Clinton was a close second, instead of first.
But questions linger, still, as to how this process unfolded, given Clinton’s advantages at the start of the race. The Atlantic’s Joshua Green obtained some fascinating internal documents that paint a discouraging picture of a Clinton campaign divided.
While Senator Hillary Clinton campaigned for president by offering herself as a sure-handed, competent successor to President Bush, her campaign team of highly paid advisers was riven by back-biting, poor management, and conflicting strategies that contributed to her loss to Senator Barack Obama, according to an article in The Atlantic that was just released.
Senator Clinton also appeared prone to blowing up in anger privately, over negative news media coverage and at her own aides for not pressing political arguments against Mr. Obama more aggressively and for not dealing better with problems such as the political limbo of her delegates from the unofficial Florida and Michigan primaries, according to an article by Joshua Green of The Atlantic magazine that was posted tonight on its Web site.
Among those contributing to the turmoil was former President Bill Clinton, who sided with Mrs. Clinton’s chief strategist, Mark Penn, in pressing for “aggressive confrontation to tear Obama down” — an assessment made by the magazine based on previously undisclosed memos and e-mail among the strategists.
There’s plenty of blame to go around.
Greg Sargent had a helpful summary of some of the highlights (or lowlights, depending on one’s perspective):
* Hillary anger prompted “kindergarten” attack on Obama. Green reports that Hillary got angry on a conference call in December of 2007
, wondering why the campaign wasn’t on the attack. That sparked a flurry of emails among Hillary advisers, with chief spokesperson Howard Wolfson writing: “I would like to put out a release documenting all the instances that we know Obama has been contemplating a potus run.”
Later the campaign would make an issue out of Obama’s kindergarten essay on running for President one day, only to say the whole thing was a joke after the attack was ridiculed.
* Several Hillary advisers advocated a big push in March to address the Florida and Michigan delegation standoffs, but the campaign didn’t do anything in earnest until May. A March 10, 2008, memo from two Hillary advisers insists that “our campaign should step into the vacuum” and says that the goal is to run up the “popular vote totals” in the two states. Nothing happened for at least two months, and by then, it was too late to build real momentum for revotes.
* Top Hillary strategist lashed out at campaign leaking. When Geoff Garin took over as Hillary’s chief strategist in April 2008, he penned a memo saying he was appalled at all the leaking going on. Garin wrote: “I don’t mean to be an asshole, but…”
* Uber-Washington-insider Robert Barnett also lost it over leaking. D.C. lawyer and top Hillary supporter Barnett boiled over after seeing a Washington Post article filled with leaks. “This circular firing squad that is occurring is unattractive, unprofessional, unconscionable, and unprofessional,” Barnett wrote. “It must stop.”
I’d just point out a couple of additional angles. First, as you may have heard, Mark Penn recommended a brutal, xenophobic series of attacks, which Clinton, to her credit, rejected. From a Penn memo:
All of these articles about his boyhood in Indonesia and his life in Hawaii are geared towards showing his background is diverse, multicultural and putting that in a new light.
Save it for 2050.
It also exposes a very strong weakness for him — his roots to basic American values and culture are at best limited. I cannot imagine America electing a president during a time of war who is not at his center fundamentally American in his thinking and in his values.
There was also this jaw-dropper:
On February 10, Clinton finally fired Solis Doyle and moved Williams in—but did not heed calls to fire Penn, enraging Solis Doyle’s many loyalists. At this crucial point, long-simmering feuds burst into the open. On February 11, Williams’s first day on the job, Phil Singer, Wolfson’s deputy and a man notorious for his tirades at reporters, blew up in Wolfson’s office and screamed obscenities at his boss before throwing open the door to direct his ire at the campaign’s policy director, Neera Tanden, an ally of Solis Doyle. “Fuck you and the whole fucking cabal!” he shouted, according to several Clinton staffers. In the end, he climbed onto a chair and screamed at the entire staff before storming out.
The same day, Philip Bennett, the managing editor of The Washington Post, sent Williams a letter formally complaining that Singer had maligned one of his reporters by spreading unfounded rumors about her (apparently in retaliation for an accurate — and prescient — story that had noted, long before anyone else, Clinton’s tendency to burn through money). Fearing for his deputy’s job, Wolfson intercepted the letter, though Bennett eventually got a copy to Williams. Singer disappeared and was presumed fired. But a week later, he made amends and rejoined the campaign. “When the house is on fire, it’s better to have a psychotic fireman than no fireman at all,” Wolfson explained to a colleague.
I’m not sure which part of this is the most bizarre, but I’m leaning towards the notion that a campaign’s communications director was hiding mail intended for the campaign manager.
It doesn’t exactly say, “finely-tuned machine.”
norbizness
says:As much as I loathed some of the principals in the Clinton campaign, I can’t see the point in getting sidetracked on it now, with less than three months left to go and that awful piece of shit McCain not electorally buried yet.
SteveT
says:Just imagine what a Hillary Clinton administration would have been like. It would have kept Democrats out of the Oval Office for decades.
Lori
says:It seems to me that if you start a campaign with the idea that there is no way you can lose… and then you start to lose, panic sets in. Clinton and her staffers didn’t have a strategy for winning, she was the frontrunner so they took no other candidate seriously. So thusly when it became apparent that Obama had a shot, they had no real strategy, hence “the kitchen sink” negativity.
Rick
says:At least we know the McLame playbook going forward.
Brian
says:I will say this, before anything else. I haven’t made up my mind yet about what the campaign tells us about the possibilities for management and competence from a Clinton administration, but I can’t think of any examples where Clinton directly attacked Obama’s American-ness. Considering the many opportunities presented to her campaign and considering the relative ease it might have had in convincing the public the nonsense they could have spread is true, I was happy to hear that she resisted such calls. I don’t think we should compliment someone for merely acting like a good person part of the time, but for all of those who said that Clinton was merely in it for herself and would sabotage the party and its nominee because of that, it doesn’t look like you were right.
I also think part of the problem is that not admitting things were drawing to a close upped the ante and made people who would normally be more professional and responsible a little nutty. It’s kind of unfair to directly compare this campaign to Obama’s, because while he has had challenges, I don’t think any are exactly like what Clinton had faced during the final months of her campaign.
nepat
says:While an interesting footnote, this isn’t exactly news. Most of this stuff had already found its way into the press and, during the campaign, the nastiest of Penn’s attacks were teased out and tested (photo of Obama in African garb). It does underscore one central, and important, idea: destiny seems to have its own charter. If Clinton were the nominee ALL of this would have continued. Gobama!
Maria
says:The most interesting parts of the story have to do with Clinton’s utter lack of campaign leadership. They describe how she was fundamentally unable to address or create resolution in these staff and strategy issues. Someone who can’t even begin to manage and direct her campaign staff–not to mention let go of incompetent toxins like Penn–is fundamentally unready to lead in the presidency, on day one or day 300.
The Democrats really dodged a bullet this primary season.
sdh
says:It doesn’t exactly say, “finely-tuned machine.”
Actually these memos are fascinating. Honestly, I hope more turn up.
None of these revelations will reflect badly on Obama; and while I don’t expect these revelations will have any impact on the election going forward, they will provide source material for any writer willing to tackle the Clinton primary run. Personally, I think a play (or movie) about Hillary’s ill-fated presidential run would make for an amazing evening of entertainment (pathos and bathos galore).
sdh
says:The Democrats really dodged a bullet this primary season.
Two bullets actually: between Edwards’ zipper problems and Clinton’s inability to govern her campaign…
Goldilocks
says:All very hyper.
Stevio
says:Without an “insider report” of Obama’s campaign to gauge a reference point to how it’s been managed it seems pretty clear McAce or Billory would have/will be awful as a president. Lots of us knew that of Billory, and have now seen just how repugnant McAce would be as a leader. This monster sold his soul for power, and Clinton placed her honor aside to stick by a loser who likes blow-jobs more than leadership. tack on Edwards to that stream. That sort-of leaves us with Obama as not only the “last hope” but a guy who is showing immense restraint against the sinks being thrown at him by lesser gods. So, until we hear just how the “fly on the wall” stuff happened behind closed doors in his campaign, we have to believe that he would lead the way he is managing his campaign: Calmly, efficiently and with honor. No sniper fire or yellowed-tooth smiled lies just yet. Win, loose, or draw, he’s showing what it is we need in a president. Let’s hope the bigots stay home and watch Survivor or America’s Funniest Home Videos on election night. Maybe Fox will run a special on “Campaign Lies and Those Liars that tell them” You know, an exposé on the MSM…
Former Dan
says:One thing I don’t like about inept leaders is their uncanny unability to make a decision and stick their heads in the sand. Everyone in a position of authority has doubts, but you can’t let them paralyze you.
These memos confirmed what many of us here picked up on the TV or working the primary.
Jen
says:I’m with the management strain of this.
This sounds like the most dysfunctional group you could assemble. A top boss that seems to have everyone afraid to give her bad news or even news or ideas because she’s likely to blow at any moment. Underbosses warring with one another and trying to curry favor with top boss. No one looking at the real issues and if they are, afraid to press the point (like counting delegates, say). And then there was the spending.
Lance
says:She should have fired Penn, if for no other reason then he thought California was a winner-take-all state.
NonyNony
says:Crap. When you phrase it that way it sounds almost like the current White House.
Chris
says:I’ve said it before and I’ll probably say it again several time before election day: the way a candidate conducts their campaign (or allows it to be conducted) says a lot about their management style and therefore a lot about the way they’d run the White House. Hillary’s campaign was based on a sense of entitlement and forgone conclusion. It seems that rather than pick the right people for the right jobs in the campaign, she picked the people who were around her and left it at that. If you felt that you didn’t have any serious competition, running a tight campaign probably didn’t feel all that necessary.
Knowing all of this, I’m glad she didn’t get the nomination. Hell, some of her most hardcore supporters STILL feel like she should have gotten the nomination and are still pouting about it. Obama didn’t steal the election, he beat her by running a better campaign and being the better candidate to fit the moment we find ourselves in. some of those hardcores will read the Atlantic Monthly article and call it a pile on. They should read it and learn from it.
Racer X
says:It doesn’t exactly say, “finely-tuned machine.”
No, it says “we dodged a bullet”.
I can’t believe the Clinton machine’s main argument was that she was such a strong candidate with the skills to get things done. What a CROCK.
Chris
says:Stevio,
“So, until we hear just how the “fly on the wall” stuff happened behind closed doors in his campaign, we have to believe that he would lead the way he is managing his campaign: Calmly, efficiently and with honor.”
I agree.
The word about Obama’s campaign from the beginning has been how drama free Obama keeps things. Any organization, especially one as harried as a presidential campaign must be, will have it’s share of internal conflicts. The thing is, we’ve been hearing bits and pieces of this about Hillary’s campaign since before Super Tuesday. Presidential campaigns are enormous organizations and none of them are immune to leaks and rumors. If Obama’s campaign was having internal struggles like Hillary’s did, we’d certainly be getting some inklings of it. This makes me feel very good about the guy who won. Confident, pragmatic, rational, logical, drama free. These are all excellent qualities for a President in my opinion.
Nashville_fan
says:Somebody needs to AMPLIFY THIS STORY!
Most companies in US avoid federal income taxes
http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5hK6PvUKazIU7T7oE7Qe-cJwP5rogD92GMEP00
mr.ed
says:Is it possible that Hillary refused to go for the jugular because she was trying to groom Obama and his charisma for VP? Bill was nasty, but could have been worse. Penn was right, and was defanged for the above and party unity. I’m sure there are ads not run that would be repeated by McCain’s camp. They’ll do their own psychological magic, and have already. They’re really good at it, and unlike Hillary, take no prisoners.
Steve
says:Hey—give me a conveyor belt with a cage-wheel, a legion of chipmunks, and a few thousand rubber bands—and I’ll move that broken-down, gas-guzzling SUV for ya. Now it might not move far, and it’s sure to sound like a herd of live piggies in a churning meat-grinder, but—it’ll move….
Shalimar
says:16.On August 12th, 2008 at 9:51 am, Chris said:
some of those hardcores will read the Atlantic Monthly article and call it a pile on.
Judging by a brief tour through the remaining hardcore Hillary sites yesterday, they aren’t addressing the substance at all. They’re mainly speculating that Solis-Doyle leaked the emails on direct orders from Obama to damage Hillary’s reputation even further and put her in her place. Which makes no sense and doesn’t fit at all with the way he has run his campaign, but then it doesn’t have to make sense for the remaining cultists to believe it. They despise Obama and everything about him even more than they love Hillary.
earthtones
says:Dropping the F-Bomb and “cabal” in the same sentence? No (further) comment….
malcolm
says:Here’s my theory:
The original Clinton plan was for Hillary to get the nomination and for Obama to get the VP slot.
Obama was nearly unknown in 2004, so they fast-tracked him by giving him the keynote at the 04 convention, in preparation of moving him up to VP in 08 when the nomination (according to the logic of the time) was Hillary’s by right.
What they didn’t count on was the idea that Obama might be more popular; might connect more with the voters.
In other words (in my opinion), they over-thought their plan and was hoisted on their own petard.
MsMuddled
says:What they didn’t count on was the idea that Obama might be more popular; might connect more with the voters. In other words (in my opinion), they over-thought their plan and was hoisted on their own petard.
I see the same thing happening in the McCain camp. The over-all plan and all the dirt gathered was done specifically to beat Hillary. If they could elect Bush twice surely they can beat her. She’s was already toasted, day-old bread.
They got no game for beating Obama which is why we’re seeing the meltdown and all the ridiculousness so early. But ain’t it beautiful?
ericfree
says:Penn’s memo on the Clinton campaign’s appeal to less educated working class voters must have gotten lost for a few months. In Iowa, she ran a country club campaign, appealing only to older, wealthier Democrats, especially women, and young sorority/professional types. The distressed working class, and there are a lot of them around here, went for Edwards, Dodd, Biden, Richards, anybody but Clinton or, to a lesser extent Obama, who was nearly unanimously the candidate of the under 35s. Clinton discovered her populism only after the real populist candidates dropped out. My concern is that all those people no longer have anyone going to bat for them, same as always.
Brian
says:“The word about Obama’s campaign from the beginning has been how drama free Obama keeps things. Any organization, especially one as harried as a presidential campaign must be, will have it’s share of internal conflicts. The thing is, we’ve been hearing bits and pieces of this about Hillary’s campaign since before Super Tuesday. Presidential campaigns are enormous organizations and none of them are immune to leaks and rumors. If Obama’s campaign was having internal struggles like Hillary’s did, we’d certainly be getting some inklings of it. This makes me feel very good about the guy who won. Confident, pragmatic, rational, logical, drama free. These are all excellent qualities for a President in my opinion.”
Like you, I think these are all reasons to like and vote for Obama. But I also think it is important to point out, he was winning, while she wasn’t. If he was in her position, it’d might be a different story. In other words, I think there’s a decent possibility she could have been a good, capable president. But I guess we’ll never know.
“Is it possible that Hillary refused to go for the jugular because she was trying to groom Obama and his charisma for VP?”
That’s a possibility, but whatever the case, she didn’t damage him as much as she could have in order to advance her own career. I never bought into the notions that she was placing her own priorities above those of the party.
Maria
says:But I also think it is important to point out, he was winning, while she wasn’t. If he was in her position, it’d might be a different story.
Isn’t that reversing cause and effect? She wasn’t winning largely because she was running such a crappy campaign.
She started out with the advantages of universal name recognition, a large war chest, big donors, the support of party elders and being the wife of a then-popular ex-president, and threw each advantage down the drain. She expected to be the candidate and that wasn’t an unreasonable expectation to begin with; if she’d run a marginally competent campaign, which includes properly estimating and planning for your opposition, she probably would have been.
I never bought into the notions that she was placing her own priorities above those of the party.
Any time you endorse the qualifications of the opposing party’s candidate over those of your own primary opponent, you are placing your own priorities above the party’s. It really is that simple. That’s why nobody else does it.
Prup (aka Jim Benton)
says:A point I have been making repeatedly (Hi, Maria)
One reason Hillary got more and more desperate was that Obama didn’t reply in kind, the way I am sure most candidates would have. I would expect that somewhere in the memos were plans to reply to his negative ads — but there weren’t any. He didn’t use any of the following:
a) an ad showing a Bill look-alike, as a carnival barker, selling nights in the Lincoln bedroom
b) an ad showing a long line of people (with money in their hands) with the title “Pardon me, Bill”
c) an ad featuring the AUMF with a picture of Hillary voting ‘aye’ with her face shown in front of a casket with a flag draped on it
any of which would have been perfectly honest attacks, but out of keeping with one of Obama’s main messages “Politics is too important for games like this.”
I think the mere fact that he didn’t ‘respond in kind’ forced the media to focus on the ads and tricks she did use, as I feel that Obama’s refusal, for the most part, to run attacks on McCain (as contrasted to McCain’s positions or tactics) has been doing the same thing.
For all the comments about the MSM ‘being in McCain’s pocket’ can anyone give me an instance of any commentator (I don’t count Faux Snooze) actually praising McCain’s ads — any of them. Maybe suggesting they are effective — but many of us have been saying this — wrongfully in my opinion. But not, when they run them, failing to point out that they are lies or misstatements. Maybe there have been, but I haven’t seen them.
doubtful
says:Hillary seemed to have too many people who thought they were ‘top dog’ on her staff. What we ended up with was a year long pissing contest, which, really Mark Penn won if you consider his bank account.
Mike
says:For all the dishonesty shown in looking at these memos, note how Penn’s ideas were not used. However, the important fact is that the Clinton’s did not expect the Obama campaign the play the race card as he did in South Carolina and other Southern states. The racism used by Obama proves how nasty, arrogant and unsuited for office he is. Obama has a personality that is most akin to Bush’s.
It was only by a 48 state strategy and the complicity of the anti-Clinton press that Obama was handed victory by the rules committee. It is clear that his caucus ‘victories’ were tarnished because caucuses are a hardship on working Americans.
I see Obama is continuing his RNC tactics. No wonder he draws support from Republicans
comstock load
says:Penn = Rove
Splitting Image
says:“For all the dishonesty shown in looking at these memos, note how Penn’s ideas were not used. However, the important fact is that the Clinton’s did not expect the Obama campaign the play the race card as he did in South Carolina and other Southern states. The racism used by Obama proves how nasty, arrogant and unsuited for office he is. Obama has a personality that is most akin to Bush’s.”
Pull the other one.
The real target of your argument isn’t Obama. It’s the black voters whose support shifted from Clinton to him in January. Obama could have played all the “race cards” he wanted, but as the recent primary in Tennessee proved, that probably would have decreased his support in the black community.
Your real argument is that none of the black votes for Obama in South Carolina should have counted, since they were obviously too dumb to recognize a real issue from a fake one.
Make no mistake about it. The drop in support for Clinton among blacks had more to do with what her campaign did than anything Obama could have done. All the memos do is apportion the blame within her campaign as to who was responsible: Mark Penn and Bill Clinton. Clinton could have defused the furor over his comparison of Obama to Jesse Jackson by pointing out that what he said equally applied to John Edwards in 2004, but Jackson came to mind first because he got a lot further before ultimately failing.
He didn’t do that. He never apologized and pretended not to know how anyone could imagine he might be trying to do exactly what Penn was in fact egging him on to do. That made him look guilty as hell to me, and probably to a lot of other people. Too bad for Hillary Clinton if both of them were disobeying orders to play that game.
marcus
says:it was a poorly run and poorly organized campaign, she was presumed to be the winner, but they didn’t fight for her to win. See I was waiting for Hillary to run for president since her husband left office. She should have run as a two year senator against Bush in 2004..the country needed her but no she bowed down, choosing to wait for the right momen (in my eyes selfish)t. as the votes began to pile up against her, they waffled about with internal bickering so instead of a cohesive strategy..they floundered until the lead was too much to overcome unless clinton could win 70% or greater in the remaining contest…..they took their eye off the ball and obama kept jabbing, winning close ones and never loosing by a margin of more than 10%.
proper preparation prevents piss poor performance……….oops sooory Hillary you had all the advantages going in and wasted them as well as the money your donors gave.I am asahmed to see you fall like this and you should be as well.