Centerfield

Mark Penn, Clinton's Would-be Rove

This could be the start of a series on these campaign season's would-be Roves. I'm starting with Mark Penn, Clinton's Chief Strategist. If I continue the series, I'll continue next with a GOP choice.

The Washington Post ran an article on what he brings to his Clinton gig, starting briefly about being fired from Gore 00 (too honest).

According to the Post article, Penn started in politics in the '77 Ed Koch NY mayoral campaign as a smart, energetic, and detail-armed pollster. He moved to DC in the Clinton reelection campaign, taking advantage of ties to Dick Morris. He replaced Morris when Morris flamed out from toe-nibbling. He's also been working in corporate market positioning, and now heads a 2000-man PR firm, Burson-Marsteller, headquartered in DC, of course.

Being convinced that Microsoft is evil, I was disturbed to read that they are a big client of Penn's company. I hope this doesn't mean too many pro-MS acts in office if Clinton wins. He also ran Blair's reelection campaign, and Windows was chosen for a frigate control application it's utterly unsuited for and a British medical app that MS' privacy record makes me wonder about.

It looks to me like Penn's mostly been pushing Clinton to follow a conservative strategy to hang on to the lead that's been Clinton's for years now.

Recently, as Obama's campaign's been spiking, Penn seems to have been following the tried-and-true third-party nastiness strategy while, as Todd pointed out, keeping the campaign's hands lily-clean.

So far, I'm seeing no sign of the kind of personal pushing to the edge that Bush/Rove dealt to McCain and Kerry.