Ezra Klein on the Disloyalty of the Clinton Staffers

Ezra:

Ezra Klein | The American Prospect: Yesterday, Howard Wolfson started as a Fox News political analyst, where he'll join Lanny Davis. Today, Mark Penn announced he's going to “create a bipartisan consulting organization to advise corporations in crisis.” His first hire? Former Bush administration PR flack Karen Hughes.

The most powerful case against Clinton's candidacy was always her political advisers. They were, and are, the sort who sign up with Fox News, and enter into business partnerships with Karen Hughes. And they do all that while they're still associated with Clinton, and when their services might still be needed in the near future.

Clinton's domestic policy instincts often seemed better than Obama's, but her political instincts, as evidenced by the folks she gathered around her, were far worse. It was hard to believe anyone who's internal compass pointed progressive would nevertheless spend millions of dollars asking Mark Penn for advice. The answer, from Clinton supporters, was always that it was about loyalty. These folks had been in the foxhole with Clinton, and she trusted them.

But there's nothing loyal about Penn's decision to partner with Hughes, or Wolfson's decision to rush to Fox -- these moves hurt Clinton. They make her a less likely choice for vice president and ensure there will be yet more ammunition against her if she ends up running in 2012. Similarly, there was nothing loyal about Mark Penn continuing to run his unionbusting PR firm Burson-Marsteller while serving as chief strategist for her campaign. Even Karl Rove had to give up his other jobs before becoming Bush's Svengali.

The political professionals clustered around the Clintons have acted like self-interested operatives, not altruistic loyalists. Their presence has hurt Clinton, their conflicts of interest have hurt Clinton, and their professional decisions and public statements have emphasized all of her political weaknesses and all of the base's fears about her campaign. Frankly, she deserved better.

The performance of Penn, Ickes, Wolfson, and company in February--happily dishing dirt, blaming the others for the failure to wrap up the nomination on Super Tuesday, in the hope of getting brownie points with reporters--was the most staggering and astonishing act of political disloyalty I have yet seen...

Comments

[Delicious Pundit]

She deserved better? How? She hired them. The proprietor here has noted what a terrible executive she is, this is just evidence of that.

Or put it this way: Hillary Clinton's closest adviser was a union buster. What does she "deserve" from progressives?

[Doctor Jay]

I agree with Brad's current statement, their behavior in February was disgraceful. I'd be delighted if they never worked in a Democratic presidential campaign again.

I'm not sure how their behavior now hurts Hillary now, as Ezra is claiming. They don't work for her any more, nothing they do now reflects on her, right? Unless you happen to follow Clinton rules, and have some crazy vendetta you're acting out on her.

[Ken Houghton]

The hiring of Mark Penn appears to have given Obama cover among the LibDems for his own repeated appearances on Faux =during the primaries,= as Delicious Pundit confirms above. So it's hard to see how Clinton advisors appearing on The Obama Network could hurt her in the VP race.

Of course, "progressives" remain loyal to their image of Obama. And, as New Soc Prof noted ten days or so ago, "Not liking Obama or his policies does not make you a racist. By the same token, McCain’s position on campaign finance and his division from the Christian right does not make him a ‘liberal’ Republican (overheard: “it’s like electing an independent!”), a friend to the middle class, or pro-choice." (http://newsocprof.wordpress.com/2008/06/27/things-i-learned-today/)

But it doesn't make him "progressive," and the likelihood that these will be the same people who were bitter in 2000 about eight years of the Clinton Administration grows daily.

[save_the_rustbelt]

Hillary Clinton has been doing a very respectable job as a Senator, but as a candidate she carried way too much expensive 1990s baggage, not to mention her husband.

Bill was last seen hinting that anyone who has been a POW might go bonkers at any moment.

How much of the problem with both parties derives from the bizarre and dysfunctional primary system? Are we really electing our best?

[ogmb]

Seriously, if you're heading an organization in crisis and you're calling the guy who thought positioning HRC as the consummate Beltway insider was a smart campaign strategy, then the probability that you're the reason why your organization is in crisis approaches 1.

[aretino]

The Cossacks work for the Czarina.

[anne]

Yes; I know the problem is only me, and I know that every adviser who works for Barack Obama is the cat's pajamas of advisers and the candidate is perfect and more, but each smashing and bashing of Hillary Clinton directly or indirectly

[Mark Penn, Harold Ickes, and Harold Wolfson are not HRC. When they got out the knives and started bashing each other in the press in February they were not serving HRC well. The point is to remember this--to make sure everybody in a similar position in the future knows that they cannot earn brownie points with the press by damaging their candidate without paying a *huge* price...]

each smashing or bashing of Bill Clinton drives me further away from wishing to have anything to do with self-styled progressives.

Please now, do explain to me just why I should be sneering at Hillary Clinton because I enjoy the explanations so much.

[anne]

"Bill was last seen hinting that anyone who has been a POW might go bonkers at any moment."

At least have the decency to reference the slander. Please set down the precise reference to the slander so that we know. Please have at least that much decency.

Please; when you destroy a person it is decent to tell precisely why. Get it?

[anne]

"She deserved better? How?"

"Unless you happen to follow Clinton rules, and have some crazy vendetta...."

"The Cossacks work for the Czarina."

"Bill was last seen hinting that anyone who has been a POW might go bonkers at any moment."

[anne]

Didier:

"Maybe just to please Obama's supporters, Clinton (former) staffers should never take a job."

Thank you. The ceaseless disdain from so many Obama supporters is beyond comprehension, and beyond forgiveness.

[jerry]

I loves you guys! Thanks for putting down what I was feeling. I too felt this post and Ezra's were much more important for the "kick people when they're down" and the ritualistic beating of the dead horse than they were for any important punditing that had been revealed.

[John Emerson]

Stephanopolous and Dick Morris were already there. And I've never been able to understand how any Democrat could ever trust someone married to someone as close to Dick Cheney as Mary Matalin.

Anne, this isn't about Obama. A lot of it's about Bill, but Hillary is much like Bill. At the beginning of the year I steeled myself to support Hillary in November, If I had to, but I'm not going to have to -- thank God. If things go well, the Clintons will end up regarded by the Democratic Party much as Eisenhower is within the Republican Party -- the man who slowed the enemy advance, but gave up too much in the process.

Yes, many of the things that the media, Democrats, and bloggers said about Hillary were wrong and offensive. But there are plenty of good reasons not to like Hillary and Bill, and I have never liked either of them except compared to Gingrich, Delay, and Bush.

What was said here about the Clinton staffers is 100% true. They're overpaid mercenaries and jerks who harmed the Democrat party (and incidentally, also seriously harmed Hillary). Good riddance to the lot of them -- though we're not rid of them, since they'll be backstabbing Democrats and liberals for decades.

Please don't try to make this about feminism or about how Hillary was abused, because it isn't.

[John Emerson]

Stephanopolous and Dick Morris were already there. And I've never been able to understand how any Democrat could ever trust someone married to someone as close to Dick Cheney as Mary Matalin.

Anne, this isn't about Obama. A lot of it's about Bill, but Hillary is much like Bill. At the beginning of the year I steeled myself to support Hillary in November, If I had to, but I'm not going to have to -- thank God. If things go well, the Clintons will end up regarded by the Democratic Party much as Eisenhower is within the Republican Party -- the man who slowed the enemy advance, but gave up too much in the process.

Yes, many of the things that the media, Democrats, and bloggers said about Hillary were wrong and offensive. But there are plenty of good reasons not to like Hillary and Bill, and I have never liked either of them except compared to Gingrich, Delay, and Bush.

What was said here about the Clinton staffers is 100% true. They're overpaid mercenaries and jerks who harmed the Democrat party (and incidentally, also seriously harmed Hillary). Good riddance to the lot of them -- though we're not rid of them, since they'll be backstabbing Democrats and liberals for decades.

Please don't try to make this about feminism or about how Hillary was abused, because it isn't.

[Delicious Pundit]

The point is, Ezra is saying that Hillary deserves better than to have top staff who reveal themselves to be more loyal to their 90s-era Beltway trough feeding than to Hillary's principles.

And I am saying, I don't see why she deserves better if these are the people who she chooses to lash herself to. By their fruits, as they say, you shall know them. It's like saying Ned Coletti is a good general manager who has been disappointed by the personnel he's chosen for the Dodgers. It's more likely true that Ned Coletti is a terrible general manager who chooses disappointing personnel.

Obama's no saint, in fact I am among those who worry he's Carter, but at least he devised a strategic positioning and executed it -- without, by the by, implying "hard-working = white".

But don't take my word for it; this fellow really socks it to Hillary:
http://www.j-bradford-delong.net/movable_type/2003_archives/001600.html

[anne]

John Emerson:

"If things go well, the Clinton will end up regarded by the Democratic Party much as Eisenhower is within the Republican Party -- the man who slowed the enemy advance, but gave up too much in the process."

This is completely fair, and John always shows respect for people even when harshly criticizing.

[anne]

Obama's no saint, in fact I am among those who worry he's Carter, but at least he devised a strategic positioning and executed it -- without, by the by, implying "hard-working = white".

[This, of course, is simply slander. Also, I was too young to have any direct sense of Jimmy carter's Presidency, but I have never had a poor impression of Carter.]

[anne]

http://www.j-bradford-delong.net/movable_type/2003_archives/001600.html

My two cents' worth--and I think it is the two cents' worth of everybody who worked for the Clinton Administration health care reform effort of 1993-1994--is that Hillary Rodham Clinton needs to be kept very far away from the White House for the rest of her life. Heading up health-care reform was the only major administrative job she has ever tried to do. And she was a complete flop at it. She had neither the grasp of policy substance, the managerial skills, nor the political smarts to do the job she was then given. And she wasn't smart enough to realize that she was in over her head and had to get out of the Health Care Czar role quickly.

So when senior members of the economic team said that key senators like Daniel Patrick Moynihan would have this-and-that objection, she told them they were disloyal. When junior members of the economic team told her that the Congressional Budget Office would say such-and-such, she told them (wrongly) that her conversations with CBO head Robert Reischauer had already fixed that. When long-time senior hill staffers told her that she was making a dreadful mistake by fighting with rather than reaching out to John Breaux and Jim Cooper, she told them that they did not understand the wave of popular political support the bill would generate. And when substantive objections were raised to the plan by analysts calculating the moral hazard and adverse selection pressures it would put on the nation's health-care system...

Hillary Rodham Clinton has already flopped as a senior administrative official in the executive branch--the equivalent of an Undersecretary. Perhaps she will make a good senator. But there is no reason to think that she would be anything but an abysmal president.

{Brad DeLong was of course wrong, but being wrong is fine too.]

[Roger Bigod]

Her effort at health care reform was a special case. The specialty of the house at Yale Law School in the late 60's was the "policy science seminar". The ones I happened to hear were excellent, but there was sometimes a wistfulness that some of the best ideas couldn't be carried out because of special interest, the narrow vision of people in authority, etc. Putting her in charge of that task force was an invitation to gratifying late adolescent idealism/glory fantasies. I don't think it's indicative of how she'd handle the Presidency. If anything, the opposite. It looks like she had a Scarlett Moment and vowed to herself "I'll never be laughed at by people like John Breaux again."

[John Emerson]

Anne, I'm respectful of you, not of everyone. You have a good track record. Where harshness is due I'm happy to deal it out.

[aretino]

"each smashing or bashing of Bill Clinton drives me further away from wishing to have anything to do with self-styled progressives."

Please step back and take a deep breath. You are better than this. Neither Hillary Clinton nor Brarack Obama nor any of their advisors is enitled to be exempt from criticism.

[anne]

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/08/opinion/l08obama.html?ref=opinion&pagewanted=print

Is This the Same Barack Obama?

To the Editor:

"New and Not Improved":

There is something very important that Barack Obama and his advisers need to understand. Senator Obama could lose the election this fall if he squanders the support of people like us, who have high hopes for him and send modest and frequent donations to his campaign.

We realize that in today's world, we may never see a real "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington"-type candidate. But if the choice in November is between two different takes on same old, same old, there is a strong possibility that we may just not vote.

Mel Minthorn
Gail Minthorn
Wilton, Conn., July 4, 2008

[anne]

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/08/opinion/08herbert.html?ref=opinion&pagewanted=print

July 8, 2008

Lurching With Abandon
By BOB HERBERT

In one of the numbers from "Fiddler on the Roof," Tevye sings, with a mixture of emotions: "We haven't got the man ... we had when we began."

Back in January when Barack Obama pulled off his stunning win in the Iowa caucuses, and people were lining up in the cold and snow for hours just to get a glimpse of him, there was a wide and growing belief — encouraged to the max by the candidate — that something new in American politics had arrived.

His brilliant, nationally televised victory speech in Des Moines sent a shiver of hope through much of the electorate. "The time has come for a president who will be honest about the choices and the challenges we face," said Senator Obama, "who will listen to you and learn from you, even when we disagree, who won't just tell you what you want to hear, but what you need to know."

Only an idiot would think or hope that a politician going through the crucible of a presidential campaign could hold fast to every position, steer clear of the stumbling blocks of nuance and never make a mistake. But Barack Obama went out of his way to create the impression that he was a new kind of political leader — more honest, less cynical and less relentlessly calculating than most.

You would be able to listen to him without worrying about what the meaning of "is" is.

This is why so many of Senator Obama's strongest supporters are uneasy, upset, dismayed and even angry at the candidate who is now emerging in the bright light of summer.

One issue or another might not have made much difference. Tacking toward the center in a general election is as common as kissing babies in a campaign, and lord knows the Democrats need to expand their coalition.

But Senator Obama is not just tacking gently toward the center. He's lurching right when it suits him, and he's zigging with the kind of reckless abandon that's guaranteed to cause disillusion, if not whiplash.

So there he was in Zanesville, Ohio, pandering to evangelicals by promising not just to maintain the Bush program of investing taxpayer dollars in religious-based initiatives, but to expand it. Separation of church and state? Forget about it.

And there he was, in the midst of an election campaign in which the makeup of the Supreme Court is as important as it has ever been, agreeing with Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas that the death penalty could be imposed for crimes other than murder. What was the man thinking?

Thankfully, a majority on the court left the barbaric Scalia-Thomas-Obama (and John McCain) reasoning behind and held that capital punishment would apply only to homicides.

"What's he doing?" is the most common question heard recently from Obama supporters.

For one thing, he's taking his base for granted, apparently believing that such stalwart supporters as blacks, progressives and pumped-up younger voters will be with him no matter what. A taste of the backlash this can produce erupted on the candidate's own Web site.

Thousands of Obama supporters flooded the site with protests over his decision to support an electronic surveillance bill that gives retroactive immunity to telecommunications companies that participated in the Bush administration's warrantless wiretapping program. The senator had previously promised to filibuster the bill if it contained the immunity clause.

There has been a reluctance among blacks to openly criticize Senator Obama, the first black candidate with a real shot at the presidency. But behind the scenes, there is discontent among African-Americans....

[anne]

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/08/opinion/l08obama.html?ref=opinion&pagewanted=print

Is This the Same Barack Obama?

To the Editor:

I share your disappointment with the "New and Not Improved" Barack Obama.

As a 60-year-old white woman who should have been firmly in Hillary Rodham Clinton's camp, I eschewed her triangulating for the promise of a politician who promised to restore the Constitution and govern the country for the common good, not just for a wealthy elite.

It is particularly disheartening that on our nation's birthday, a progressive Democratic candidate cannot find the courage to uphold the vision of the founding fathers against an overbearing state and instead feels moved to support warrantless wiretapping and telecom amnesty.

His disheartened supporters are beginning to see that "Change We Can Believe In" is really "Change When It's Expedient."

Barbara Kautz
Tiburon, Calif., July 4, 2008

[anne]

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/10/washington/10fisa.html?hp&pagewanted=print

July 10, 2008

Senate Backs Wiretap Bill to Shield Phone Companies
By ERIC LICHTBLAU

WASHINGTON — More than two and a half years after the disclosure of President's Bush's domestic eavesdropping program set off a furious national debate, the Senate gave final approval on Wednesday afternoon to broadening the government's spy powers and providing legal immunity for the phone companies that took part in the wiretapping program.

The plan, approved by a vote of 69 to 28, marked one of Mr. Bush's most hard-won legislative victories in a Democratic-led Congress where he has had little success of late. Both houses, controlled by Democrats, approved what amounted to the biggest restructuring of federal surveillance law in 30 years, giving the government more latitude to eavesdrop on targets abroad and at home who are suspected of links to terrorism.

The issue put Senator Barack Obama of Illinois, the presumptive Democratic nominee, in a particularly precarious spot. After long opposing the idea of immunity for the phone companies in the wiretapping operation, he voted for the plan on Wednesday. His reversal last month angered many of his most ardent supporters, who organized an unsuccessful drive to get him to reverse his position once again. And it came to symbolize what civil liberties advocates saw as "capitulation" by Democratic leaders to political pressure from the White House in an election year.

Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York, who was Mr. Obama's rival for the Democratic presidential nomination, voted against the bill.

The outcome was a stinging defeat for opponents who had urged Democratic leaders to stand firm against the White House after a months-long impasse.

"I urge my colleagues to stand up for the rule of law and defeat this bill," Senator Russell D. Feingold, Democrat of Wisconsin, said in closing arguments.

But Senator Christopher S. Bond, the Missouri Republican who is vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said there was nothing to fear in the bill "unless you have Al Qaeda on your speed dial." ...

[anne]

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/10/opinion/10cohen.html?ref=opinion&pagewanted=print

July 10, 2008

The Mother of Friendships Lost
By ROGER COHEN

PARIS — There are relationships for which a novel is a more adequate form than journalism. Their twists, and attendant psyches, demand an act of the imagination to render them. Into that category falls the recurrent charged drama of Anthony Lake and Richard Holbrooke.

Its latest subplot emerged last month when Barack Obama announced a 13-member Senior Working Group on National Security that includes Lake but omits Holbrooke, probably the most prominent Democratic foreign-policy luminary excluded from the inner circle.

Some may see no more than victors' justice in this omission. Lake, who was national security adviser to Bill Clinton, sided with Obama from the outset. Holbrooke, the former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations who bullied Bosnia's warring factions into peace in 1995, supported Hillary Clinton.

But other prominent Hillary backers — including two former secretaries of state, Madeleine Albright and Warren Christopher, and a former defense secretary, William Perry — glided into a top Obama team oddly weighted, for a professed change agent, toward veteran Washington insiders.

In this context, Holbrooke's nonglide was conspicuous....

[Maynard Handley]

"
Is This the Same Barack Obama?

To the Editor:

"New and Not Improved":

There is something very important that Barack Obama and his advisers need to understand. Senator Obama could lose the election this fall if he squanders the support of people like us, who have high hopes for him and send modest and frequent donations to his campaign.

We realize that in today's world, we may never see a real "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington"-type candidate. But if the choice in November is between two different takes on same old, same old, there is a strong possibility that we may just not vote.

Mel Minthorn
Gail Minthorn
Wilton, Conn., July 4, 2008
"

Never compromise with the enemy. Never betray your principles. Let's see:
How did that work out for the Soviet Union and its refusal to ally with the Social Democrats in the 1930s?
Or, closer to home, how about those people who refused to vote for Dems in 2000 and 2004? Proud of yourselves?

Honestly, the petulance, the petty-mindedness, the childishness, the sheer stupidity of some people (no names) is astonishing. Here's a message from the adults: Politics is not about you. It is about compromise. It is about what's the best that can be done, given the divergent interest of 300 million+ individuals. You choose the best you can; you don't sulk in your bedroom because you weren't elected king or queen of the prom.

[smaug]

The problem is the whole concept of "loyalty." In US politics, loyalty seems to mean "back the politician (but not fellow staffers) without question until he or she fires you, and then keep your mouth shut." The Clintons displayed little loyalty toward subordinates: remember how Lani Guinier and Kimba Woods were hung out to dry (and in the case of Guinier, the shunned)? Similarly, Pataki's lieutenant governor, Betsy McCaughey, was condemned for being disloyal because she disagreed on policy matters. Nixon was the archetype of the US loyalty fetish.

Klein has a more high-minded view of loyalty than exists in the US political culture. By his standard, Penn, et al are disloyal, but, in the conventional standard, they are very loyal to Clinton. They have not disavowed her and have not flocked to her rival.