Last night, The Atlantic released online Josh Green's article from the magazine's September issue (see it here), examining the inside intrigues and conflicts that undid the Clinton campaign. Based on a trove of internal memos and emails (see them here) leaked to Green by Clinton staffers, the article says that her bitterly divided staff did not serve her well and that she herself was insufficiently in charge, failing to make hard choices.
The anger and toxic obsessions overwhelmed even the most reserved Beltway wise men.
. . .
[H]er advisers couldn’t execute strategy; they routinely attacked and
undermined each other, and Clinton never forced a resolution. Major
decisions would be put off for weeks until suddenly she would erupt,
driving her staff to panic and misfire.
Above all, this
irony emerges: Clinton ran on the basis of managerial competence -- on
her capacity, as she liked to put it, to "do the job from Day One." In
fact, she never behaved like a chief executive, and her own staff
proved to be her Achilles' heel. What is clear from the internal documents is that Clinton’s loss
derived not from any specific decision she made but rather from the
preponderance of the many she did not make. Her hesitancy and habit of
avoiding hard choices exacted a price that eventually sank her chances
at the presidency.
Commenting on Green's article from his own blog, Jim Fallows writes that "The magnum opus among the memos, based on what I've seen, is this one from Mark Penn, which is sure to be parsed and reflected-upon for months and years." This is the memo that's already received lots of publicity in the last few days -- the one in which strategist Penn urges criticism of Obama's multicultural background.
It also exposes a very strong
weakness for him -- his roots to basic American values and culture are
at best limited. I cannot imagine America electing a
president during a time of war who is not at his center fundamentally
American in his thinking and his values.
Reporting in this morning's New York Times on the revelations in Green's article, Patrick Healy writes that there was great turmoil and conflict in the campaign about how to deal with the growing strength of Barack Obama's candidacy. Bill Clinton sided with Mark Penn, pushing for what Green describes as "aggressive confrontation to tear Obama down," while some others in the Clinton camp, such as Harold Ickes and Mandy Grunwald, urged a more restrained approach against Obama.
There was never any doubt in my mind that nominating Hillary Clinton would be a huge mistake for the Democratic party. I'm even more convinced now, on the basis of Green's portrayal of her campaign as rudderless and leaderless, that we're really lucky that we dodged that bullet. Or, as Green more accurately shows us, that she shot herself in the foot.
