Hillary Clinton was furious, it is said, when she discovered that her chief political strategist, Mark Penn, was meeting with the Colombian ambassador, advising him on how to pass a free-trade pact with America that Clinton opposes. Penn, a pollster with long ties to both Bill and Hillary Clinton, was demoted — not fired. The whole episode gives reason to believe that when it comes to politics, George W. Bush is both smarter and more ethical than Hillary Clinton.
Here is why. Besides holding the top job in the Clinton campaign, Penn is CEO of the global lobbying and public relations firm Burton-Marsteller, in which capacity he was advising the Colombians. That company also represents Blackwater Worldwide, the private security-contracting firm that operates outside the laws in Iraq and is blamed for many civilian deaths. Also, Penn's firm represents Countrywide Financial, the nation's largest mortgage lender, which is deeply involved in the collapse of the housing market.
With conflicts of interest so obvious, you might ask why he was ever allowed to operate as Clinton's chief political adviser. And you will understand with clarity why Bush insisted that Karl Rove divest himself of all other clients when he signed up to manage Bush's presidential campaign in 2000. 
Penn, whom Clinton previously described as "brilliant and intense, shrewd and insightful," formulated the strategy of her presidential campaign, basing its message on strength and experience, derived mainly from the years in the White House with Bill. Mostly, her opponents and the press have allowed this strategy to stand without examination.
But it is fair to ask, as Pulitzer Prize winner Carl Bernstein has done in his masterful biography, "A Woman in Charge," what were her contributions? Bernstein adds things up this way: "With the exception of her husband's libidinous carelessness, the most egregious errors, strategic and tactical, of the Bill Clinton presidency, particularly in its infancy, were traceable to Hillary."
She drove the inept staffing of the transition, including a search for attorney general that produced two Nannygate scandals. She instigated the travel office firings that produced Travelgate and stonewalled Whitewater until it morphed into the Ken Starr investigation and metastasized into Monica Lewinsky and impeachment. She demanded to be put in charge of health care, and that it come before welfare reform as the preeminent domestic initiative of Bill Clinton's first term. Then, with her penchant for secrecy and control, she botched the effort, insulting, offending and alienating key members of Congress, and driving health care reform off the national agenda.
Thus Bernstein concludes, "For the first time in American history, a president's wife sent her husband's presidency off the rails." All this led to a collapse of public support for President Clinton, the annihilation of the Democrats in 1994, and the rise of Newt Gingrich. 
When she got to the Senate, a position Clinton has treated as a mere way station en route to the White House, her most important vote was in support of the resolution authorizing President Bush to use military force in Iraq. As if to prove she doesn't learn from her mistakes, Sen. Clinton was the only Democratic presidential contender to support Sen. Joe Lieberman's resolution to denounce a unit of Iran's army, the Revolutionary Guard Corps, as a terrorist organization, opening the door to another war.
Remember, Penn was not fired. He is still the chief pollster for Hillary's campaign. If she wins the nomination and election, he surely will be around for the next Clinton presidency. He was in Bill's White House during his Lewinsky troubles and impeachment scandal, loyal throughout, a virtue most prized by the Clintons.
As they make up their minds, those Democratic superdelegates who remain uncommitted should weigh Hillary's flawed judgment in hiring a high-profile lobbyist to be chief strategist of her presidential campaign, along with the suspect validity of her claims to be experienced and ready to lead. |
