Today’s Washington Post has a long but worthwhile article on the dysfunctional family that is the Hillary Clinton for President campaign:
For the bruised and bitter staff around Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, Tuesday’s death-defying victories in the Democratic presidential primaries in Ohio and Texas proved sweet indeed. They savored their wins yesterday, plotted their next steps and indulged in a moment of optimism. “She won’t be stopped,” one aide crowed.
And then Clinton’s advisers turned to their other goal: denying Mark Penn credit.
With a flurry of phone calls and e-mail messages that began before polls closed, campaign officials made clear to friends, colleagues and reporters that they did not view the wins as validation for the candidate’s chief strategist. “A lot of people would still like to see him go,” a senior adviser said.
The depth of hostility toward Penn even in a time of triumph illustrates the combustible environment within the Clinton campaign, an operation where internal strife and warring camps have undercut a candidate once seemingly destined for the Democratic nomination. Clinton now faces the challenge of exploiting this moment of opportunity while at the same time deciding whether the squabbling at her Arlington headquarters has become a distraction that requires her intervention.
It’s not just Mark Penn that was a problem, though, because nobody in the campaign knew how to deal with Slick Willie Clinton:
“The greatest challenge going into the campaign,” a senior campaign aide said with a sigh, “was the management of Bill Clinton.”
That seemed evident in South Carolina. The former president had grown frustrated that the campaign had not aggressively challenged Obama and so took it upon himself to go after the senator from Illinois, but in the process his comments unwittingly triggered an uproar that many Clinton advisers think the Obama campaign fanned by — in their view — twisting his words to paint him unfairly as a racist.
The Clinton camp ended up spending nearly $7 million in South Carolina, but Obama won in a landslide. On Jan. 26, the day of the election, Penn sent an e-mail to the senior campaign staff comparing Obama’s victory there to Jesse L. Jackson’s two wins in the 1980s. Bill Clinton made the same comparison to reporters that day, generating even more anger among African Americans who perceived it as a way of marginalizing Obama by portraying him as a black candidate who appeals only to black voters.
The rest, of course, is history. Obama went on to win the endorsement of Ted Kennedy, the most delegates on Super Tuesday, the Potomac Primaries, and Wisconsin. The momentum that started in South Carolina is the reason the Clinton campaign is in the situation it’s in today, and it’s largely Bill Clinton’s fault.
It’s after Super Tuesday, apparently, that things really started breaking down inside Camp Clinton:
Nerves were raw by this point. Penn and Grunwald engaged in a 15-minute squabble that later made it into the media over which ad to run in Virginia. He wanted an ominous one called “Freefall” that warned of bad economic times, while she wanted one called “Can Do” featuring the candidate talking against patriotic music about solving problems. Cecil grew so exasperated, he stood up and left. “This is ridiculous,” he said, according to people in the room. “You guys need to grow up. You’re acting like kids. I’ve got work to do.”
A more explosive example of the stress came a few days later. Phil Singer, the campaign’s deputy communications director, emerged from a meeting on Feb. 11 and without explanation started angrily cursing the war room. “[Expletive] all of you,” he shouted, according to a witness, then stormed out and did not return for several days.
Penn was growing increasingly aggravated by what he saw as an untenable management structure, which another aide described as an “oligarchy at the top.” Penn had no real people of his own on the inside and chafed whenever Solis Doyle or Ickes got involved in his sphere. At one point, he and Ickes, who have been battling each other within the Clinton orbit for a dozen years, lost their tempers during a conference call, according to two participants.
“[Expletive] you!” Ickes shouted.
“[Expletive] you!” Penn replied.
“[Expletive] you!” Ickes shouted again.
And now, here they are. The candidate staged an impressive comeback on Tuesday, but it is clearly too little, too late. There’s no way she can win enough pledged delegates to surpass Obama in the remaining primaries, and her logic for convincing superdelegates is increasingly slim.
The more interesting question that this article raises though are about Hillary Clinton’s ability to control her own subordinates and prevent their differing agenda’s from effecting the overall mission and what that means for just what kind of Administration she’d run if she did win the White House.
Based on what we’re seeing, her claim to be “ready on Day One” is looking less and less believable.
