Any hopes Hillary Clinton’s campaign had that it could make the demotion of “chief strategist” Mark Penn a neutral or even positive story is rapidly dimming, as political journalists line up to criticize its general competence.
The latest example is a harsh article in The Politico by Jim Vandehei and David Paul Kuhn with the unforgiving title: “Clinton leadership a study in missteps.” A sample:

Clinton has overseen two major staff shake-ups in two months. She has left a trail of unpaid bills and unhappy vendors and had to loan her own campaign $5 million to keep it afloat in January. Her campaign badly underestimated her main adversary, Barack Obama, miscalculated the importance of organizing caucus states and was caught flat-footed after failing to lock up the nomination on Super Tuesday.
It would be easy to dismiss all of this as fairly conventional political stumbling — if she hadn’t made her supreme readiness and managerial competence the central issue of her presidential campaign.

Ouch.
For what it’s worth, I personally think a lot of the criticism of Clinton’s campaign is an exercise in 20-20 hindsight. Her third-place finish in the Iowa Caucus disguised an organization in the state that was probably better than that of past winners. Her fundraising, and even her small-dollar fundraising, has vastly outstripped all precedents. And obviously, she’s survived political near-death experiences at least twice in the course of this campaign.
The problem is that in Barack Obama, Clinton has faced a candidate and a campaign that are operating on a whole ‘nother level. As Peter Beinart put it in a Washington Post op-ed piece yesterday, Obama’s [campaign] “has been an organizational wonder, the political equivalent of crossing a Lamborghini with a Hummer.”
And despite his obvious vulnerabilities against Clinton and potentially against John McCain in a general election, Obama has created a political movement that constantly threatens to change the rulebook.
Let’s put it this way: is anyone confident, in retrospect, that Hillary Clinton would not have already locked up the nomination weeks ago if Obama were not in the race? Could, say, John Edwards or Bill Richardson or Chris Dodd have really challenged her financially, or picked up enough votes to have come close to the powerful women/Hispanic/African-American coalition she would have been able to put together if Obama hadn’t run?
I certainly doubt it. So maybe the best assessment of HRC’s candidacy at this point is that she’s run the kind of campaign that should have and probably would have won if so many constellations hadn’t suddenly lined up against her.
That’s how it looks post-Penn, and how it may look post-Pennsylvania as well.

In 2002, PBS began to post most of its Frontline documentaries online. Last year, they used a $5 million grant from MacArthur Foundation to expand the capabilities of its video player, which paved the way for last month’s four-and-a-half hour documentary, Bush’s War.
PBS doesn’t know for sure how many people watched the documentary when it aired on television. But it does know that more than 1.5 million people have tuned into some portion of the program online. Many have watched the episode in full.
Keep in mind: this is a television program longer than most feature films. It is undeniably engaging, but it remains a documentary with voiceovers, news clips, and interviews. It is fundamentally a piece of political nonfiction, and we don’t expect PBS documentaries like this to be sensations. But online, that is exactly what “Bush’s War” has become.
Liberated from the television, “Bush’s War” is something more than just a film. The webpage for the documentary is packed with features. There are more than a 20 interactive timelines and maps, which viewers can use to track the rise of terrorism through more than three decades. There are 175 embedded video clips and full transcripts from more than 400 Frontline interviews. There is a live chat with the producer and a forum for discussion. Bush’s War is being watched and talked about and explored in ways not possible in any other format.
All of which suggests a similar point to the one we were trying to make with our comments about Barack Obama’s speech on race — the web is making room for long forms of political dialogue. The speech was less than an hour, and this program runs nearly five times as long, but millions of people are sitting down to watch each of them.
That indicates something healthy about our democracy. The web is just an outlet for this type of content — it still must engage an audience in order to reach a level of popularity. In both of these cases, though, that is exactly what is happening , despite their length and substance.
The sound-bite isn’t dead, and the news as we know it will be with us for awhile. But we are watching the birth of a new type of public discourse.

There’s been a link up top of the site for a few days about Democracy Corps’ new survey and analysis on how Democrats ought to deal with national security issues in this election cycle.
There’s a lot of valuable stuff in this analysis, but I’d like to zero in on a couple of specific points involving perceptions of a very important voting category, defined by DCorps as follows:

There is a bloc of 12 percent of the likely electorate, “Democratic Wanna-Ds,” who say they would vote for a Democrat in a generic presidential ballot, but then do not pick either Senator Clinton or Senator Obama in the named ballot match-ups. Most of these Wanna-Ds, 57 percent, are moderate-conservative Democrats, while 29 percent are self-described independents; a fall-off in support from the moderate-conservative Democrats is a major reason both Clinton and Obama are now trailing.

In other words, these are the folk who are the most likely targets for a Democratic general election campaign.
Two things about “Democratic Wanna-Ds” jump right off the page in DCorps’ polling on national security issues.
First of all, by a 49-46 plurality, “Democratic Wanna-Ds” think John McCain would “mostly bring a different approach than President Bush” to national security and foreign policy issues. This is highly similar to the perception of Republicans, and sharply divergent with that of most Democrats. Thus, one obvious way to help convert the “Wanna-Ds” to the Democratic presidential candidate is to constantly highlight McCain’s congruence with Bush security policies, instead of letting him use occasional differences like Guantanamo or (some) torture practices to look like a GOP “maverick.”
Second of all, by a startling 33 percentage points, the “Wanna-Ds” say they worry more that Clinton or Obama will be too reluctant to use military force abroad, than McCain being too willing to use military force abroad. Given the wording here, the question is about as clear an indicator of which party’s candidates control the “center” on national security as you are going to find. And the Wanna-Ds are way off the Donkey Reservation here.
These numbers reinforce a simple but critical point about the emerging battle-lines of the general election, in which virtually every issue other than national security will almost certainly help produce a Democratic win: the Democratic nominee must work overtime to expose the extremism and recklessness–in other words, the Bush-like qualities–of John McCain’s national security record and platform, while removing every reasonable doubt that he or she is willing to use military force to protect national interests where necessary and appropriate. This latter objective does not mean “moving to the right” or agreeing with McCain on specifics like Iraq or Iran, but it does mean making it clear that differences on those specifics and others are based on a strong and clear-eyed Democratic commitment to national security.
It would be a tragedy if Democrats succumbed this year to the ancient temptation of changing the subject from national security to economic or other domestic issues, treating the former as “Republican territory” that will be conceded as simply less politically potent. There’s a clear case to be made that Democrats are actually superior in managing the country’s international challenges, but we’re going to have to actually make it.

I’ve got a brief piece up today on the DLC’s Ideas Primary site drawing attention to the growing contrast between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton’s staunch support for public financing of both presidential and congressional campaigns, and John McCain’s back-peddling on this issue, despite his reputation as a champion of campaign finance reform.
Given McCain’s terrible fundraising record, and the emerging Democratic fundraising advantage, this is all kind of ironic, and a token of the ideological hostility of conservatives to campaign finance reform generally.
Check it out, and makes notes for those future moments when McCain’s trying to reclaim the reform mantle.

No matter what happens in the presidential elections, Democrats are very optimistic about increasing their margins of control in both the U.S. House and Senate. In the House, one reason for optimism is a continuing wave of Republican incumbent retirements in potentially vulnerable districts.
Stuart Rothenberg of Roll Call maintains a “Dangerous Dozen” list of the twelve open House seats most likely to produce a change in party control. His latest edition, out today, shows ten of the twelve as currently in Republican hands.
As Rothenberg notes: “A significant number of retirements since my last Dangerous Dozen (Oct. 25, 2007) has shuffled the list and shows why the fight for the House is a one-sided battle, with Democrats having most of the targets.”

Despite all of the buzz about Senator John McCain’s explosive temper, Democrats would be wise not to bet on a McCain meltdown. Sure, he could lose his cool at some point, but accounts of his intemperate outbursts over the years indicate that he rarely goes ballistic in public forums.
McCain projects a very tightly-controlled persona in media interviews. One of his more impressive communication skills is to lower the volume in his one-on-one television interviews — almost to a whisper — conveying a sense that “this is a reasonable, level-headed man,” in stark contrast to reports of his temper tantrums with aides, congressional peers and his spouse. A lot of voters seem to be impressed by this, and it may be reflected in McCain’s relatively high ‘favorable’ scores in opinion polls — even though the content of what is being said, particularly in McCain’s case, is often disturbing. (Glenn Greenwald has a good post on the topic of McCain’s manipulation of the media here)
McCain is also reportedly adept at schmoozing the press, one reason for the ‘free ride’ many progressives see in the coverage of McCain’s campaign so far. The media interview is McCain’s strongest messaging skill, and his campaign will deploy it lavishly in the months ahead. Don’t be surprised by a series of faux interview, low-content ads showing McCain as a ‘down-to-earth’ guy.
The tightly-controlled persona loosens some in his speech-making, because political speeches require a little passion. Here McCain is good at projecting appealing personal qualities like humility. In his Washington Times article, reporter Stephen Dinan jokingly describes McCain’s current series of speaking engagements, said to be peppered with self-effacing comments meant to endear him to audiences, as the “imperfect public servant tour.”
But the tension is there in the debates. McCain is a white-knuckle debater and appears easily annoyed at times. Both Clinton and Obama have an edge over McCain when it comes to debating skills. But we have seen in recent presidential elections that “who won the debates” doesn’t necessarily decide the election. As Chicago Tribune reporter Jim Tankersly notes via the LA Times,

There’s also a reason Republicans think their party will prevail: In several recent presidential elections, issues took a back seat to personality. Voters want government to do more to fix the economy. They also want U.S. troops out of Iraq. The presumptive Republican nominee, Sen. John McCain, sides with a distinct minority on both counts…But on less tangible questions of leadership, strength and trustworthiness, polls show McCain beating Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama, the Democratic candidates.

Oliver Wendell Holmes once said that FDR had “second-class intellect, but a first class temperament.” Although it’s a bit of a stretch to characterize a President smart enough to win four terms as intellectually lagging, Holmes’ point about the importance of temperament in a politician is instructive. (See Geoffrey Ward’s “A First-Class Temperament: The Emergence of Franklin Roosevelt” for an interesting book on the topic)
Democrats are in a good position with respect of the temperament of both leading presidential candidates. Clinton’s communication skills have improved significantly as a Senator. Obama seems to have temperamental maturity beyond his years, which should serve him well in face-ups with McCain, should Obama win the nomination. But it would be folly to let reports of McCain’s tantrums make Democrats overconfident. Better for Dems to assume they are dealing with a highly-skilled communicator and respond accordingly.

Here are some new political books that are going to create some buzz over the next few months.
White House Ghosts: Presidents and Their Speechwriters, by Robert Schlesinger
Schlesinger examines the men and women who write for the White House and how their roles and responsibilities have changed over time. April 15, 2008
Heads in the Sand: How the Republicans Screw Up Foreign Policy and Foreign Policy Screws Up the Democrats, by Matthew Yglesias
Yglesias — a blogger for The Atlantic — writes about America’s foreign policy debate and argues for a new progressive direction. April 22, 2008

The Post-American World, by Fareed Zakaria
Zakaria — the editor of Newsweek International — discusses the rise of nations like China, India, Brazil, and Russia and describes the ways in which geopolitics are changing as a result. May 6, 2008

Counselor: A Life at the Edge of History, by Ted Sorensen
Sorenson — former speechwriter for John F. Kennedy — offers an account of the history he witnessed and helped to shape. May 6, 2008
Nixonland, by Rick Perlstein
Perlstein — the author of a widely read history of the Goldwater revolution — turns his sights on Richard Nixon and the way his presidency changed the American political landscape. May 13, 2008
Soldiers of Reason: The RAND Corporation and the Rise of the American Empire by Alex Abella
A comprehensive history of the nation’s most influential (and least understood) think tank. May 13, 2008

By His Own Rules: The Story of Donald Rumsfeld, by Bradley Graham
Graham — a military affairs reporter with The Washington Post — describes the life of the controversial defense secretary. July 7, 2008
Green Is the New Red, White, and Blue: America’s Mission in a World That Is Hot, Flat, and Crowded, by Thomas L. Friedman
The newest book by the columnist for the New York Times makes the case for a new green economy. August 19, 2008
Happy reading.

After the breakneck sprint of January and February, the pace of the Democratic presidential campaign slowed down in March. There were only 6 contests, and they had wrapped up before the end of the second week.
After each broke personal and historic records in February, the fundraising for Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton reflected the slower turn.
Neither campaign had a bad month — Obama brought in $40 million, which was his third-best total to date; Clinton brought in $20 million, which was her second-best total to date. But the lack of calendar-driven benchmarks clearly had an impact on campaign donations.
For Obama, the story is largely about consistency. More than 442,000 gave money to the campaign, and close to half — 218,000 — were first time contributors. His average donation was $96, and to date, Obama has been supported by more than 1,276,000 total donors.
The picture for Clinton is a little more complicated. In February, the campaign announced that she had pulled in $34.5 million in contributions — easily her best month ever. When the campaign filed its finance report with the FEC three weeks later, however, we learned that only $11.7 million of that total was designated for the nomination contest. Two-thirds of Clinton’s February cash would only be available for the general election if she became the nominee. She also finished the month with close to $9 million in outstanding debts. Howard Wolfson has assured Josh Marshall that ‘almost all‘ of the March money is for the nominating contest, but Clinton’s FEC reports should be worth looking into later.

The big political news this Monday morning is last night’s announcement by Hillary Clinton’s campaign that Mark Penn was being “demoted” from his role as Chief Strategist for HRC, though he’ll apparently continue to do some residual polling. It took nearly a week, but the move was clearly the result of Penn’s meeting last Monday with the Colombian ambassador to discuss the status of congressional action on a free trade agreement with the U.S. Penn is CEO of the public relations giant Burson-Marsteller, which has a $300,000 contract with the Bogota government. Given the Clinton campaign’s criticism last month of a meeting with Canadian consular officials by Obama economic advisor Austan Goolsbee to discuss the future of NAFTA, Penn’s departure is hardly a big surprise.
It was a really bad week for Penn, since the Colombians promptly canceled their contract wth Burson-Marsteller after the story broke.
Readers who don’t know Mark Penn from Pennzoil may wonder why this staff change is being treated as such a big deal. It’s pretty simple: Penn has long become the symbol of pretty much everything about the Clinton campaign that its detractors, and even many of its supporters, don’t like: its alleged arrogance, its corporate-friendliness, its “poll-driven” lack of passion, and its early strategy of depicting the candidate as “inevitable.” Labor folk have been angry for a good while about Penn’s continued leadership of Burson-Marsteller, which makes a fair amount of money advising corporations on how to fight unions. And a lot of people towards the left end of the party have strongly disliked Penn for years dating back to his partnership with Dick Morris in the Clinton White House and the 1996 Clinton-Gore campaign, not to mention his role in Joe Lieberman’s 2004 presidential run.
At this very late date, it’s hard to imagine that Penn’s departure will make a lot of difference to Clinton’s campaign. But I’d expect we’ll soon start hearing stories that the move has miraculously revived campaign morale; they could use some signs of positive motivation right now, real or contrived. So Penn’s unhappy moment in the political spotlight may continue for a while yet.

Marking the 40th anniversary of the assassination of his father, Martin Luther King III has an op-ed in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution proposing a cabinet-level officer “whose responsibility will be to make a measurable impact on eradicating poverty.” King explains further that,

A poverty cabinet member is necessary today more than ever. Our next president will be taking over a government that faces virtually the exact same poverty rate my father found so appalling back in 1968. The U.S. Census Bureau reports the current poverty rate is just over 12 percent, as it was in 1968, while the number of people living in poverty has grown from 25 million to more than 36 million, including 12 million children. Even worse, a family of four with two children and an annual income of $21,027 is not even considered poor by our government’s reporting standards. Many people have become immune to these statistics, but we cannot wait for another Katrina to truly grasp that America is awash in poverty.
The work of the cabinet officer must transcend the ceremonial. His or her principal focus must be highlighting successful programs working at the local level, developing new, more accurate measurements for poverty, and setting benchmarks for success by which the administration will be judged.

It’s an interesting idea, and one which has reportedly elicited some interest from the three leading presidential candidates. We’ve got cabinet secretaries for Treasury, Commerce, Labor and other departments that address economic concerns, but mostly from a business perspective. But a cabinet secretary charged with focusing exclusively on reducing poverty could be a significant step toward making government more responsive to human needs than corporate concerns.
When King’s father was assassinated, he was organizing the Poor Peoples’ Campaign, a national coalition to advocate for impoverished Americans of all races. Democrats who want to honor Dr. King in a meaningful way would do well to give his son’s suggestion serious consideration.