Jason Horowitz : Micro Mark (Penn)

[babylonsister]

Micro Mark

Hillary Clinton’s Svengali, Super Micro-Trend Pollster Mark Penn: ‘People Misunderstand,’ He Says Campaign ‘Never About the Small Things,’ And, ‘If We Lose, I Will Take My Share of the Responsibility’
by Jason Horowitz | February 26, 2008


Mark Penn thinks that people have the wrong impression about him, and about Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign.

“I think that people misunderstand,” he said in a 45-minute phone interview Monday evening.

He said that the emerging story line—that his poll-obsessed, microtargeting approach had produced a plodding, uninspiring campaign—was a bum rap. “The campaign has been about big goals, health care, ending the Iraq war, new energy, the future,” he said. “There was a misunderstanding that this campaign was about small things. It never was. If anything, the Obama campaign has microtargeted constituencies.”:crazy:

Fair or not, the fate of Mrs. Clinton’s campaign—she’s heading into the last-chance March 4 primaries with her lead dwindling in Ohio and gone in Texas—is going to be seen as a referendum on Mr. Penn, who has arguably been the Clintons’ most influential adviser for more than a decade. As the campaign squares up to the possibility of an ignominious end on March 4, Clinton loyalists have left no doubt about who they consider to be the responsible party.

Leon Panetta, who served as chief of staff in the White House from July 1994 to January 1997, told The Observer’s Niall Stanage in an interview this week that Mr. Penn “is a political pollster from the past.”

“I never considered him someone who would run a national campaign for the presidency,” Mr. Panetta said.

A source in the campaign, speaking on background, said that Mr. Penn’s philosophy was perfectly represented by a comment he made during one of Mrs. Clinton’s debate preps at campaign headquarters in early winter. About 15 staffers were in a room with Mrs. Clinton discussing how she could best respond to a particular line of attack. One of the aides, the source recalled, had an idea.

“I think you need to show a little bit of humanity,” said the aide.

Mr. Penn interjected. “Oh, come on, being human is overrated.”

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http://www.observer.com/2008/micro-mark