The Problem Wasn't Penn

by Steve Soto

It wasn't the spendthrift nature of his services.

It wasn't the god-awful campaign strategy of pinning everything on Super Tuesday, ignoring small states, and being totally clueless about the fundraising strategy of your chief opponent, an opponent you helped create by elevating him too soon and then mishandling South Carolina.

It wasn't blowing the whole wad by Super Tuesday, leaving you broke and without a contingency for a state-by-state battle to stem the momentum from going dark while your opponent rolled past you.

And it wasn't the total lack of an effective, consistent campaign message or rationale for the ongoing campaign, other than to prevent your remaining opponent from getting the nomination.

No, what sunk Mark Penn was his ongoing duality as a corporate lobbyist and Hillary strategist, something that the netroots have been criticizing since early last year. And yet it just now reached a tipping point with Team Hillary, because this late in a failed campaign they cannot afford one more conflict of interest from their chief strategist?

It isn't a problem for McCain's campaign to be run by lobbyists, because McCain isn't conflicted by having the Disaster Capitalism merchants handle his message or put words in his mouth: he believes every damn word and supports more of the same. But Hillary has known about Penn's dual loyalties to her and corporate cash since way before this campaign, and she's just now dumping him, which says more about her than it does about him.

In this, she shares something dreadful with George W. Bush: placing loyalty above competence, and even integrity. And like Bush, it's way too little and way too late. I almost laughed when I read that both Hillary and Bill were outraged that Penn went to a meeting on the Columbian trade agreement account, because it ran counter to her position on the deal. The issue here is not Penn, but their judgment in the first place. What this really says is that Penn is choosing corporate money over her campaign because he knows it's the end of the line for this campaign anyway.

If you want loyalty, get a dog. If you want to win, surround yourself with smart, ruthless winners committed to your cause and nothing else.