Clinton Aide Penn's New Role Looks to Some Like the Old One

[DeepModem Mom]

WP: CLINTON CAMPAIGN
Aide's New Role Looks to Some Like the Old One
By Anne E. Kornblut
Washington Post Staff Writers
Tuesday, April 8, 2008; Page A04

The question for some staff members of Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton's campaign yesterday was why it had taken her so long to remove Mark J. Penn as its chief strategist. But other aides wondered how the campaign will function without Penn. And despite the announcement Sunday that he is giving up his strategist role, it remain to be seen how removed he will be. Penn was on a top-level conference call yesterday, one insider said; he is helping Clinton (N.Y.) prepare for the next Democratic debate, on April 16; and his firm, Penn Schoen & Berland Associates, will continue to conduct some polling for the campaign....

(Maggie) Williams is "doing what she has wanted to do all along, just in her own time," the insider said. "She couldn't get rid of Mark until he gave her the rope" with which to hang him. That was his meeting with the Colombian ambassador to the United States to discuss promotion of a free trade treaty that Clinton opposes. The timing of Penn's meeting came at a particularly inappropriate time, just as Clinton was trying to win the support of the United Steelworkers of America, who had earlier endorsed former senator John Edwards (N.C.) and has not picked between Clinton and Sen. Barack Obama (Ill.) since Edwards left the race. As one official at the union put it, "There's no way Mark Penn's departure can be a negative with our members."

Democratic pollster Mark Mellman, who is not associated with the Clinton or Obama campaign, said he doubts Penn's new role will mean significant changes. "We are very near the end of the race, and the course has largely been set," he said by e-mail yesterday. "The new message mavens may tack 10 degrees one way or the other, but it's just too late for any wholesale changes in message or strategy." In her announcement on Sunday, Williams said that longtime communications director Howard Wolfson and pollster Geoff Garin, a relatively new recruit to the operation, will share the role of chief strategist. "I think it's more accurate to say there is no chief strategist, other than the candidate," said one Clinton loyalist, speaking candidly on the condition of anonymity.

More than a year ago, reports began surfacing of potential conflicts of interest that could emerge between Penn's corporate work as chief executive of Burson-Marsteller and Clinton's campaign activity....

"He has been in an inherent conflict of interest for more than a year," said Fred Wertheimer, head of an ethics watchdog group, who has been critical of Penn's efforts to balance his business and the campaign. Wertheimer called it "a classic example of how big money has inextricably intertwined the campaign advising and lobbying worlds of modern-day Washington with potential conflicts of interest all over the place."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/04/07/AR2008040702657.html

[tanyev]

1. Williams..."couldn't get rid of Mark until he gave her the rope"

Isn't working for a political campaign completely an at-will position?

[flor de jasmim]

2. The mind boggles...just when you thought you'd heard it all.

If any other candidate had been so inane, he/she would long have been out of the race.