After Patti Solis Doyle and Geraldine Ferraro, Mark Penn is the third senior adviser to Hillary Clinton to step down or be demoted. Each time one of the praetorian guard falls, more questions are asked about the judgement of the commander-in-chief.
It was Penn’s big idea to play on Clinton’s managerial competence and her experience under fire. He was the author of the most famous advertisement of the campaign, asking voters who they would like in the White House at 3am when the red phone rings. He was the brains behind the strategy which contrasted her battle-hardened experience (even if she had to embellish her story of facing snipers in Bosnia) with Barack Obama’s untested hand at the tiller.
Both Hillary and Bill Clinton trusted Penn to the point of being blind to his failings. The event that propelled his demotion was a classic conflict of interest. As the chief executive of a major PR firm for whom he continued to work, Penn advised the Colombian government on how to secure congressional approval for a free-trade deal.
This was exactly the sort of trade agreement that Clinton is backing away from as she approaches a crucial primary in Pennsylvania. Such states are sensitive to shedding jobs abroad. The damage is all the greater because Penn did not go immediately. He tried to ride out the storm created when the Wall Street Journal reported that he had met the Colombian ambassador with an admission that the meeting was “an error of judgement”. It took a union coalition against Penn to force his eventual demotion.
This was a disaster waiting to happen, and it speaks volumes about Clinton’s mindset. Penn is a figure from the mid-90s who kept Bill Clinton’s campaign fighting for the centrist vote. He did the same for Hillary Clinton’s Senate campaign in 2000.
Both husband and wife owe Penn a debt of gratitude for the quality of his past advice, but neither appreciates how much of a liability he has become today. Penn’s innate conservatism, which can be seen in anything from economics to Clinton’s refusal to renounce her vote in the support of the Iraq war, is anathema in a post-Bush era where conservatism is discredited.
What Democrat voters want, and arguably what the United States wants too, is not a reminder of how far right a centrist president can be pushed, (the leitmotif of the Clinton/Blair era) but how much distance a new president can put between him or herself and George Bush, possibly the worst president in US history. The US’s desire for a fresh start is so obvious it is hard to underestimate, but Hillary and Bill Clinton have been making a good stab at it, propelled by the need to re-fight the battles of the past.
Obama has drawn level with Clinton in the latest opinion polls in Pennsylvania, and it is now possible to imagine him winning the state, which only a month ago was hers for the taking.
If Clinton wins Pennsylvania on April 22 and North Carolina and Indiana on May 6 she will be entitled to battle on, forcing the superdelegates to make the decision that the voters could not quite make themselves. But if she falters again, and the day she will know will be May 7, it will surely be time to bring an end to one of the most fractious Democratic nominations in living memory.
For after that point Clinton will not be able to hide behind the rationale that she is testing the electability of her Democrat opponent. The storm over the fiery sermons of Jeremiah Wright produced one of the best and bravest speeches Obama made. But that test has been passed.
Other stumbling blocks can be created but it is going to look increasingly as if the Clintons are doing John McCain’s work for him. Refusing to admit defeat, if the next three states produce an indecisive result, will have nothing to do with the big picture. It will have everything to do with a refusal to admit that the Clinton era is over, for both of them. — Â