Hillary Clinton's chief campaign strategist met with Colombia's ambassador to the U.S. on Monday to discuss a bilateral free-trade agreement, a pact the presidential candidate opposes.
Attendance by the adviser, Mark Penn, was confirmed by two Colombian officials. It is not clear if Mr. Penn was there in his campaign role or in his job as chief executive of Burson-Marsteller Worldwide, an international communications and lobbying firm.
The firm has a contract with the South American nation to help promote congressional approval of the trade deal, among other things, according to filings with the Justice Department.
Penn, Schoen & Berland Associates, Mr. Penn's campaign-consulting firm, received more than $10million in payments from the Clinton campaign as of the end of February, according to federal election filings.
Mr.Penn declined to comment. Howard Wolfson, communications director for Sen. Clinton's campaign, declined to comment on Mr.Penn's presence at the meeting. "Sen. Clinton's opposition to the trade deal with Colombia is clear," Mr.Wolfson wrote in an email response to inquiries. He referred questions to Burson-Marsteller. A firm Burson-Marsteller spokesman did not return calls or emails seeking comment.
A spokesman for Colombia's President Álvaro Uribe said that the ambassador met with Mr. Penn to discuss the bilateral agenda. "There have also been meetings with the advisers to the campaigns of Sen. Barack Obama and Sen. John McCain," he said, calling the meetings part of the embassy's normal business. "It's the embassy's job to explain Colombia's reality."
UPDATE: At The Field, Al Giordano has a post about an attack on Obama from Colombia's President Uribe (Mark Penn's client) who Al calls "the single biggest violator of human rights in the American hemisphere." What a coincidence, huh?
Yesterday, I posted the latest outrageous comments from the losing campaign's chief strategist, Mark Penn. On a conference call, Penn basically said Obama can't win the general election. I swear, they just sit over at the Clinton HQ in Arlington and make things up. And, for some reason, despite Penn's failed strategy, the media thinks that if he says it, it must have merit. Whatever.
But bad news for Penn and Team Clinton is that Governor Rendell, who was on the very same conference call with Penn, disagrees. Rendell said Obama is going to win Pennsylvania in November (video via Ben Smith):
No one knows Pennsylvania voters like Rendell. So, the Clinton campaign's top surrogate just undermined the latest Clinton talking point.
The Obama campaign obviously disagreed with Penn, too. They emailed out this statement last night mocking Penn (who is so mock-worthy):
It can't inspire too much confidence in the Clinton campaign when their pollster ignores both polls and math by making comments as divorced from reality as this one. Senator Obama is leading in delegates, states won, the popular vote, and fares better than Senator Clinton against John McCain in poll after poll, including critical swing states like Iowa, Colorado, Pennsylvania, New Mexico and Wisconsin.
Yep. And, it can't inspire confidence when the Clinton campaign's top Pennsylvania supporter, Ed Rendell, affirms on national t.v. just how divorced from reality Penn is. At least some people associated with the Clinton campaign aren't willing to destroy the Democratic party.
"This election will come down to delegates.... Again and again, this race has shown that it is voters and delegates who matter, not the pundits or perceived 'momentum.'" - Mark Penn, chief strategist for Hillary's campaign, Feb. 13, 2008
This is the Clinton's top adviser Mark Penn in March 2008:
As the campaign faces a make-or-break moment, some high-level officials are trying to play down their role in the campaign. Penn said in an e-mail over the weekend that he had "no direct authority in the campaign," describing himself as merely "an outside message advisor with no campaign staff reporting to me."
"I have had no say or involvement in four key areas -- the financial budget and resource allocation, political or organizational sides. Those were the responsibility of Patti Solis Doyle, Harold Ickes and Mike Henry, and they met separately on all matters relating to those areas."
Compare that to the Mark Penn of April 2007, which can be found after the break. You see a much different role in the Clinton campaign for Penn.
This was from a Washington Post series on "the gurus" of the top campaigns:
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.
Yet Penn also has everything that Clinton would want in a senior consultant: undisputed brilliance and experience, according to even his enemies; clear opinions, with data to back them up; unwavering loyalty; and a relentless focus on the endgame: winning the general election. And Clinton clearly adores him. She describes Penn in her autobiography, "Living History," as brilliant, intense, shrewd and insightful.
Don't blame Penn for anything. He's too "brilliant, intense, shrewd and insightful" -- and very well paid -- to be wrong.
As has been widely reported, Hillary Clinton's top guru, Mark Penn, is leading the charge within the Clinton campaign to go aggressively negative against Obama. Besides the fact that Penn is the architect responsible for Hillary's presidential aspirations going from "inevitable" to being on life support, he is reportedly obsessed with destroying Obama. While it is understandable that Clinton's top adviser wants his client to win at all costs, going massively negative against Obama (or Hillary for that matter) risks damaging our candidate in the fall election against McCain. Unfortunately, this is something another "client" would welcome. That client is named John McCain.
Penn is the CEO of Burson-Marsteller, a DC public relations (PR) firm. Burson-Marsteller owns a subsidiary, BKSH. BKSH is run by Charlie Black. Black is a longtime Republican politico, and a top adviser for John McCain for President. And, as Think Progress notes, while Black is a volunteer on the McCain campaign, he views Mcain as his client and continues to take a paycheck from BKSH. JedReport dissected these relationships in a diary on DailyKos last night.
A host of prominent Republicans fall under Penn's purview. B-M's Washington lobbying arm, BKSH & Associates, is run by Charlie Black, a leading GOP operative who maintains close ties to the White House, including Karl Rove, and was a partner with Lee Atwater, the consultant who crafted the Willie Horton smear campaign for George H.W. Bush in 1988. In recent years Black's clients have included the likes of Iraq's Ahmad Chalabi, the darling of the neocon right in the run-up to the war; Lockheed Martin; and Occidental Petroleum. In 2005 he landed a contract with the Lincoln Group, the disgraced PR firm that covertly placed US military propaganda in Iraqi news outlets.
Black is only one cannon in B-M's Republican arsenal.
Penn works for Clinton.
Black works for McCain.
And Black works for Penn.
Keep this in mind as you read some of the guiding principles for Penn's and Black's firm, courtesy of the Burson-Marsteller website:
# We, the directors and employees of all companies in WPP recognize our obligations to all who have a stake in our success including shareowners, clients, employees, and suppliers;...
# We will not for personal or family gain directly or indirectly engage in any activity which competes with companies within WPP or with our obligations to any such company;
# We will not have any personal or family conflicts of interest within our businesses or with our suppliers or other third parties with whom we do business;
So, again, we have to ask: Why is Mark Penn on a mission to destroy Obama? It's clear that Penn benefits if Hillary wins -- she's his client, his firm's client. His company benefits if McCain wins -- he's the client of one of Penn's top employees. Penn has an obligation to his shareholders and clients. And his firm seems to have clients on both sides of the aisle, on both sides of this fight. If Obama wins the presidency, Penn gets nothing. He was helping the other guy, or gal. But if McCain wins, Penn's firm has one hell of a contact with the new president - heck, one of his top employees had the new president as a client and didn't even charge him! Is it a conflict of interest? Not with his clients. But how about with the Democratic party and our interests?
Mark Penn's firm has made millions from the Clinton campaign. Yes, millions to lead the Clinton campaign to where it is today. Anyone who has watched any cable news or read any political articles over the past couple days knows Penn wants the campaign to get very, very ugly. He's been telling that to anyone who will listen -- and obviously telegraphing that message to any entities preparing to spend money "independently" on Clinton's behalf. (Penn couldn't tell them directly because coordination isn't allowed, but if they read it in the paper or hear Howard Fineman say it on MSNBC, well, that just happens.) He's also trying to get the Clinton campaign itself to attack Obama more aggressively. Penn sounds obsessed with destroying Obama and stated his case again to the Politico:
“In the coming week,” Penn told Politico, “Sen. Clinton will show that she is the one ready to be commander in chief, manage the economy and defeat John McCain. She will both present her plans on [the] direction to take the country, in settings like an economic summit, and show how Sen. Obama has said one thing in his speeches and another in his negative mailers.”
Mark Penn has already done enormous damage to the Clinton campaign -- making millions in the process. Now, he wants to destroy Obama. Doubtful that Penn will succeed. Nothing else he has tried this cycle has worked. And, Obama has already shown he can take anything Penn and company throw at him.
But, it's Penn's drive to go totally negative that deserves a look. It's almost like it doesn't matter to him who wins in November -- as if the consequences don't matter.
Maybe to Penn, they don't. Read or re-read Ari Berman's seminal piece about Penn, which appeared last May in The Nation. Don't forget, Penn has a day job running one of the biggest public relations firms in the world, Burson-Marsteller. There's an excerpt after the break about Penn's work there. After you read it, ask yourself whose side Penn is really on.
The whole article is worth a read, but this gives a good picture of the guy who desperately wants to go negative against Obama:
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.
A host of prominent Republicans fall under Penn's purview. B-M's Washington lobbying arm, BKSH & Associates, is run by Charlie Black, a leading GOP operative who maintains close ties to the White House, including Karl Rove, and was a partner with Lee Atwater, the consultant who crafted the Willie Horton smear campaign for George H.W. Bush in 1988. In recent years Black's clients have included the likes of Iraq's Ahmad Chalabi, the darling of the neocon right in the run-up to the war; Lockheed Martin; and Occidental Petroleum. In 2005 he landed a contract with the Lincoln Group, the disgraced PR firm that covertly placed US military propaganda in Iraqi news outlets.
Black is only one cannon in B-M's Republican arsenal. Its "grassroots" lobbying branch, Direct Impact--which specializes in corporate-funded astroturfing--is run by Dennis Whitfield, a former Reagan Cabinet official, and Dave DenHerder, the political director of the Bush/Cheney '04 campaign in Ohio. That's not all. B-M recently partnered with lobbyist Ed Gillespie, the former head of the Republican National Committee, in creating the new ad firm 360Advantage, run by two admen for the Bush/Cheney campaigns. Its first project was a campaign against "liberal bias" in the media for the neoconservative Weekly Standard magazine.
As expected with such a lineup, B-M has a highly confrontational relationship with organized labor. "Companies cannot be caught unprepared by Organized Labor's coordinated campaigns," read the "Labor Relations" section of its website, describing that branch of the company (the section was altered after The American Prospect quoted it in March).
Joe wrote last night about the import of Superdelegate Congressman John Lewis changing his support from Clinton to Obama. Josh Marshall at TPM weighs in as well:
But the most immediate and significant import is Lewis's signal that whatever the basis of his original endorsement he is unwilling to join Clinton in carving a path to the nomination through the heart of the Democratic party. The tell in Lewis's announcement is that he is not technically withdrawing his endorsement from Hillary, at least not yet. He is saying that as a super delegate (which is by virtue of being a member of Congress) he plans to vote for Obama at the convention. On Wednesday the Clinton camp started pushing hard on the idea that a delegate is a delegate and if they need to pack on super delegates to overwhelm Obama's edge with elected delegates then so be it. A win is a win is a win. I take this as Lewis saying he just won't sign on for that.
After the jump, Josh weighs in about top Clinton adviser Mark Penn, and it ain't pretty...
You've seen my continuous barbs at Mark Penn, Clinton's 'chief strategist'. The last couple days have shown very clearly I think that Clinton could do nothing better for her campaign than to throttle this clown and let her get down to the business of making a case to voters for her candidacy. Perhaps good spin is an oxymoron, moral if not linguistic. But good spin is clever and forward-leaning pitches of actual realities, facts. The word in the sense we use it today actually came into being in the early 90s and to a great degree around the '92 Clinton campaign, which had such mastery in its practice. But this Clinton campaign has been doing it in a weird parody mode. Not sharp 'spins' on favorable realities, but aggressive pitches of complete nonsense. So now you have Penn successively saying caucus wins don't really count, small state wins don't really count, medium state wins don't really count, states with large African-American populations don't really count, all building up to yesterday's gem: "Could we possibly have a nominee who hasn't won any of the significant states -- outside of Illinois? That raises some serious questions about Sen. Obama."...
Clinton is ultimately responsible for putting her political fate in this fool's hands. But this is a guy who has basically one big political win under his belt and whose record in seriously contested races, particularly Democratic primary races is one of almost constant defeats. Much of Clinton's current predicament stems from Penn's disastrous, glass-jaw 'inevitability' strategy and the mind-boggling decision not even to contest a slew of states where Obama racked up huge victories and many delegates.
Campaigns are about winning votes not making excuses. There are plenty of delegates still out there for Clinton to win -- over a thousand left in the remaining primaries. But her efforts are being stymied by a campaign apparatus rooted in the belief that any new reality can be overturned by pretending it away.
I would go on step farther and suggest that Hillary's campaign apparatus expected to win from the beginning and, more importantly, expected to be treated from the beginning as if they deserved to win, were owed a win, and had already won. The cockiness didn't go over well with the blogs, the media, or the public. People want to be told why they should support a candidate rather than why they'd better support a candidate, or else.
