The Political Inquirer

Clinton aide says Obama can’t win. The fact is that the Clinton aide, Mark Penn, cannot win. Unfortunately for Penn, he will be remembered as the person who made repeated miscalculations in a campaign that should have resulted in Hillary Clinton breezing to the 2008 Democratic nomination. Since the beginning of this campaign it was obvious something was wrong. The tone was wrong. The strategy was wrong. I now can conclude what was wrong in two words: Mark Penn.

The two campaigns had two different type of strategists: Mark Penn, the pollster, worked for Hillary Clinton. David Axelrod, the ad man, worked for Obama.

Mark Penn had been considered for a spot in the Al Gore campaign in 2000 but eventually Al Gore took a pass. Here is how the Washington Post reported that event.

It was fairly simple, Mark J. Penn said calmly to Vice President Al Gore, reporting the findings of an exhaustive survey he had conducted in the early stages of the 2000 presidential campaign. Voters liked Gore’s policies. They just didn’t like Gore.

Gore laughed, according to people who attended the meeting. He had heard that before. But the vice president, worried about the effect President Bill Clinton’s scandals might have on his campaign, had another question for his pollster: Was there any evidence of this “Clinton fatigue” that people kept talking about?

I’m not tired of him,” Penn replied. “Are you?

The implication is that had Mark Penn been hired by Al Gore he would have won the Presidency. And I don’t think that anyone could have changed Al Gore in the year 2000 into a likable figure. It simply wasn’t his time. But through a twist of fate, however, Al Gore is today one of the most likable men in America and Mark Penn is trending downward. Oh, I can just hear Mark Penn bluster, “Screw all of you.”

Mark Penn was correct. Unfortunately for Hillary Clinton, Mark Penn had not learned his lesson from the Gore campaign and applied it to Clinton. The negatives with Hillary Clinton in 2007 were much higher than the negatives for Al Gore in 2000. The mood of the country has shifted to an “anybody but Bush” attitude on the part of the electorate. And without Obama in the campaign, Clinton would have been the Democratic nominee and not broken a sweat.

Obama changed all that.

Mark Penn ran the campaign as if Obama didn’t exist. It is Mark Penn who “never saw it coming,” meaning this phenomenon called Barack Obama. Judging from the attitude of the campaign in the early stages, they were convinced that Obama’s candidacy would never amount to anything.

Mark Penn set the tone that Hillary Clinton was the incumbent. The “inevitability” of her ascendancy soon became a “vulnerability.” The problem for Penn was he didn’t understand the mood of the nation. Mark Penn’s background is as a pollster and it is from that perspective that he ran Hillary Clinton’s campaign.

Mr. Penn, on the other hand, is a pollster, and pollsters tend to look at campaigns as a series of dissectible data points that either attract voters or drive them away. Get a health care plan and an economic plan that 70 percent of people say they view favorably. Pay attention to words that move the dial in focus groups, like “real solutions for America” or “ready to lead on Day 1.”

Mrs. Clinton’s relentless focus on pragmatism and specificity, as well as her willingness to shift slogans, are not simply a result of her own personality but also of Mr. Penn’s strategic outlook, which values testable ideas and phrases over more sweeping imagery and themes.

Mr. Penn’s influence was on display last weekend when both Mrs. Clinton and her husband suddenly started talking about the potential of her choosing Mr. Obama as a running mate, even though she has consistently disparaged him as too inexperienced to occupy the Oval Office. It seems likely that Mr. Penn polled this question in the wake of Ohio and Texas and found that it had appeal. Thus the campaign abruptly began hammering at a new message, and one that undermined its core point about Mr. Obama, in order to peel off some critical segment of voters reflected in the latest data.

It takes more to get elected President, as he pointed out to Al Gore, than the nation likes your policies. The must like the candidate too. Had Mark Penn spent any time studying the Obama campaigns of the past, especially the 2004 United States Senate bid, he would have been enlightened.

David Axelrod, on the other hand, had a different kind of focus.

This is probably a big reason why Mr. Obama has, from the start, focused almost exclusively on broad themes of “hope” and “change.” His campaign reflects all the attributes of a political ad: the stirring words, the beautiful pictures, the simple and elegant story line of a ruined political system and the man whose moment has arrived.

Mr. Obama demonstrated the constancy of this approach on the night of his losses in Ohio and Texas. Mrs. Clinton had spent the previous week mercilessly deriding Mr. Obama as a guy who gives nice, vague speeches but who isn’t versed in the finer points of governing. The attacks seemed to have taken their toll.

But when Mr. Obama took the stage in San Antonio, he seemed bent on reiterating her point — or at least he didn’t attempt to refute it. Rather than seek to reassure viewers about his gravitas, Mr. Obama stubbornly dove right back into his familiar narrative of inspiring a movement.

Hillary Clinton was focused on specifics and minutiae, while Obama presented a bigger picture vision of the world. Hillary would spend time pointing out excruciating details of her health plan, while Obama would speak in generalities about “change” and “inspiration.”

The problem with Penn is that he refused to be flexible in his strategic plan. When he saw that it was failing, he failed to correct the situation.

That failure to acknowledge mistakes are an ingrained part of the Hillary Clinton campaign culture. Admit nothing. It started early on with her refusal to admit the Iraq War vote was a mistake.

History may show that Mark Penn changed the Presidency twice. Once in 2000 when he wasn’t hired by Al Gore. And then in 2008, when he was hired by Hillary Clinton.

With different leadership in the Clinton campaign 2008, the ending might have been different. Barack Obama may one day thank Mark Penn for the Presidency of the United States. Reading on Walden Bookstore.