How Hillary's campaign managed itself into a ditch—and how it might get itself outby Joshua Green
Like so much involving Hillary Clinton, Sunday’s departure of her campaign manager, Patti Solis Doyle, has gotten tons of attention, but its larger significance has been somewhat misunderstood. I’ve spent a fair amount of time over the last two years reporting on “Hillaryland,” as Clinton’s inner circle is known, for pieces like
this one and
this one, and also, infamously, for one that did not run when
GQ magazine opted to kill it after learning of the Clinton campaign’s displeasure (
full story here). The latter piece focused on the inner workings of Clinton’s presidential campaign and Solis Doyle’s controversial role in it, and I’ll draw on what I learned then to try to add perspective to recent happenings.
For the many people in and around Washington who obsess over the latest machinations in Hillaryland, the firing of Solis Doyle—and she was fired, several insiders confirm—is a big deal, but for reasons somewhat different from what the media coverage has suggested. Her title of “campaign manager” implies a loftier role than the one she actually played. She is the furthest thing from a Rove-like strategic genius (Mark Penn inhabits that role for Hillary), so her leaving doesn’t signify an impending change of strategy, as some reports seem to assume. Rather, Solis Doyle, who began as Clinton’s personal scheduler in 1991 (and who, as it happens, coined the term “Hillaryland”) was Clinton’s alter ego and was installed in the job
specifically for that reason. Her performance in Clinton’s past races and especially in this one reflects all the good and the bad that the alter-ego designation carries. I’ve always felt that the most revealing thing about Solis Doyle is her oft-rep eated line: “When I’m speaking, Hillary is speaking.” It is revealing both because it is true and because it conveys—and even flaunts—an arrogance that I think is the key to understanding all that has gone wrong for the Clinton campaign.
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To understand how this happened, it’s helpful to know a bit about the history of rivalry and factionalism in Hillaryland. The self-mythologizing tale most often told by its inhabitants is that during Bill Clinton’s administration, while his advisers were leaking left and right as they jockeyed for primacy and influence, Hillary’s were fiercely loyal. “My staff prided themselves on discretion, loyalty, and camaraderie, and we had our own special ethos,” Clinton wrote in her memoir,
Living History. “While the West Wing had a tendency to leak, Hillaryland never did.”
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As Clinton stagnated in the polls that year, a turbulent divide opened up within her own camp over how to respond to her image problem. Tensions flared between advisers such as Penn and Mandy Grunwald, her media consultant, who wanted her to stick to the issues, and others, such as Jewson and Harold Ickes, who thought she should confront her chief shortcoming—the notion that she was power-hungry and calculating. As Michael Tomasky revealed in his fine memoir about the campaign,
Hillary’s Turn, Jewson conducted a series of focus groups to see why Hillary wasn’t selling and learned that women saw her as “savvy, pushy, cold … back-stabbing … self-centered.” One woman compared Hillary to her mother-in-law. The battle between the camps intensified to the point that it began to go public, most notably when someone
leaked Penn’s internal polling data to the New York Times Magazine. Penn and Ickes regularly erupted into shouting matches and eventually stopped speaking to each other, communicating instead through an intermediary.
<...>
Concerns about Solis Doyle have preoccupied many in the campaign for several years. Clinton insiders say that her campaign chairman, Terry McAuliffe, launched an unsuccessful bid to remove Solis Doyle while on vacation with the Clintons two years ago. Two top campaign officials told me that Maggie Williams, Hillary’s former chief of staff (and, as of Sunday, her campaign manager), also sought and failed to have Solis Doyle removed two years ago. Last year, some of Bill Clinton’s former advisers, known as the “White Boys,” lobbied to oust her, too.
But because of Solis Doyle’s proximity to Hillary Clinton, because she demonstrated the loyalty and discretion Clinton so prized, and because no one appeared capable of challenging Clinton’s presumed status as the Democratic nominee-in-waiting, nothing was done. “What Patti has that is real power is the unquestioned trust and confidence of the candidate,” Paul Begala, a veteran of Bill Clinton’s campaigns, explained in an on-the-record interview last year. “That makes her bulletproof.”
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The extended denouement that began after the Iowa caucuses and finally culminated with Sunday’s departure reinforces this supposition. By all accounts, Solis Doyle’s firing became imminent after the first loss, as the extent of the damage sank in. (My colleague Marc Ambinder has provided
plentiful detail on this here and
he re.) She’d been dispatched to Iowa to oversee operations in the final weeks before the caucuses, and Clinton still finished third.
She’d been placed in charge of the campaign’s relationship with John Kerry and hoped to get an endorsement, but he’d chosen to back Obama. And of course, the campaign had hemorrhaged money, which Solis Doyle had managed to conceal. The ax was expected to fall the day after New Hampshire (Solis Doyle opted not to depart on her own after Iowa), but it didn’t happen until weeks afterward because Clinton put off making the crucial decision—just as her alter ego was often charged with doing. (The best blow-by-blow account is
this prescient New Republic piece by Michelle Cottle that was read avidly inside the campaign because it’s so accurate.) Even then, Solis Doyle’s departure took a near-mutiny to bring about. Williams and Lieberman left their jobs last week; this finally seemed to have influenced Clinton to oust Solis Doyle.
Infighting and jockeying for position. Oh, there's
that Kerry endorsement, again.
Posted: Thursday, February 14, 2008 9:06 AM by Domenico Montanaro
CLINTON: So how did Clinton find herself in this predicament? The
New York Times attempts to answer that question: "She and her team showered so much money, attention and other resources on Iowa, New Hampshire and some of the 22-state nominating contests on Feb. 5 that they have been caught flat-footed -- or worse -- in the critical contests that followed, her political advisers said." More: "She also made a strategic decision to skip several small states holding caucuses, states where Mr. Obama scored big victories, accumulating delegates and, possibly, momentum. Her heavy spending and relatively modest fund-raising in January compounded the problems, leaving the campaign ill-equipped to plan after Feb. 5, advisers and donors say."
And: "Guy Cecil, Mrs. Clinton’s field director, told reporters on Wednesday that Mrs. Clinton would not be outmatched again, committing to opening offices and dispatching staff not only to Texas, Ohio and Pennsylvania, but also other battlegrounds to come, like Kentucky, Mississippi and even Puerto Rico, which holds the final contest on June 7. ‘We are recommitting and redoubling our efforts to not only have the best candidate in the race, but also have the most effective and largest grass-roots effort in the states going forward,’ Mr. Cecil said.”
On the message front, the
Washington Post writes: "Clinton's first step in trying to reverse Obama's momentum came early yesterday with a release of a new ad criticizing her rival for refusing to debate in Wisconsin before next Tuesday's primary. But while that suggested Clinton may get tougher with Obama, her initial moves were tentative. Speaking at a rally in McAllen, Tex., yesterday morning, she said: ‘I am in the solutions business. My opponent is in the promises business. I think we need answers, not questions.’”
“Later, in Robstown, Tex., she addressed the issue of change that has been at the heart of Obama's message. ‘There's a lot of talk in this campaign about what kind of change we're going to have,’ she said. ‘Well, let me just say change is going to happen whether we want it or not. Change is part of life. Change is a constant. The question is who can master and direct change so it actually results in progress for America.’”
Time doesn't quite have a post-mortem, but it's close: "Much of the blame, from both within and outside the campaign, has been aimed at Clinton's chief strategist, Mark Penn. ‘He never adjusted,’ says a prominent Democrat. ‘I don't think he knows how to do primaries. He doesn't know how to do what is essentially a family fight.’ But that explanation misses a larger possibility: that Bill and Hillary Clinton, who came of age in politics a generation ago, no longer have the touch for the electorate they once did."
"The campaign's inner circle has finally begun to expand. Austin, Texas, advertising man Roy Spence (who helped come up with the state's ‘Don't mess with Texas’ slogan) will aid in shaping the candidate's message. Campaign deputy manager Mike Henry followed Doyle out the door, and his role is being given to field director Guy Cecil. Adviser Harold Ickes, who for months has been urging the Clintons to focus on ground-game vulnerabilities, is also ascendant, thanks in part to his close relationship with Williams. Moaned a top official: ‘The work on the ground was never done. We have been consistently outhustled in the field.’ And while chief strategist Penn's position appears secure, campaign insiders believe he will not be able to operate with as much unquestioned autonomy as he used to have."
moreHillary is running a "deer caught in the headlights" campaign.
by Frank James
We reporters love to get good anecdotes about what’s happening inside presidential campaigns and Monica Langley and Amy Chozick at the Wall Street Journal got a great one that’s in
their story today about Sen. Hillary Clinton’s campaign.
But the campaign has something of a shellshocked feel, as staffers privately chew over a blowup last week where internal frictions flared into the open. Clinton campaign operatives say it happened as top Clinton advisers gathered in Arlington, Va., campaign headquarters to preview a TV commercial. "Your ad doesn't work," strategist Mark Penn yelled at ad-maker Mandy Grunwald. "The execution is all wrong," he said, according to the operatives.
"Oh, it's always the ad, never the message," Ms. Grunwald fired back, say the operatives.
The clash got so heated that political director Guy Cecil left the room, saying, "I'm out of here."
Such eruptions are no surprise in a campaign struggling to get some momentum and slow down that of it’s rival, Sen. Barack Obama. It’s still makes good reading.
It really adds the human element to the coverage, that these are real people we're talking about
moreI don't think this was the McAuliffe mean when he said Hillary's campaign strategy was to allow "
her human side to show."
The Democrats' nominee should be chosen by party faithful, not a small number of elite delegates.February 14, 2008
College student Jason Rae has become a Wisconsin celebrity. News reports have him fielding a call from ex-President Clinton and breakfasting with Chelsea. He also has chatted with Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts, an Obama backer. Not bad for a 21-year-old who has never voted in a presidential election.
Rae is a momentary superstar because he is a superdelegate, part of an elite 800-member club that, in the likely event that neither candidate can drum up the 2,025 pledged delegates needed to win, would choose the Democratic presidential nominee. With Sens. Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton nearly in a dead heat, this assortment of Congress members, Democratic governors and party leaders has suddenly become a focus of the two campaigns. The bad news for Democratic voters is that many superdelegates are jumping the gun and making up their minds about which candidate to back, so the candidate with the most votes may not win the nomination. That would be a tremendous mistake.
The system of superdelegates, created after the 1980 election, gives roughly seven-millionths of the Democratic Party 20% of the vote at the convention. It was put in place after party leaders felt sidelined by earlier rules changes that had returned the bulk of nominating power to voters. What they hoped to avoid was another fiasco like the nomination of George McGovern in 1972. The ultra-liberal wing of the party ensured he won the primary vote, but in the general election he carried only a single state, Massachusetts. Yet 1972 was a long time ago, and the superdelegate system is showing signs of wear. It's too late to tinker with it for this election, but there are ample reasons for these special delegates to hold back and avoid anointing a winner while voters are still doing their part.
Here's a consideration for them to ponder. Which wing of party stalwarts can superdelegates afford to alienate by backing one candidate prematurely? Moderate to liberal men, who back Obama? White women, who back Clinton? Do you drive away Obama's supporters in the African American community, or Clinton's in the Latino community?
The best function of superdelegates would be to legitimize a candidate who already had won the majority of Democratic delegates. That's what happened in 1984, when Walter Mondale had a narrow lead over Gary Hart going into the convention and the superdelegates backed the former vice president. Although this page firmly supports Obama, the Democrats have two worthy choices and do not need party bigwigs to decide for them. For the bulk of the superdelegates to commit now would be not only unnecessary, it would be undemocratic.
Interesting!
Let democracy rule!!
Edited to add:
But a funny thing happened on the way to the victory podium at the Democratic National Convention. While Clinton was busy running as a pseudo incumbent, Obama donned the mantle of change and built a fund-raising and ground operation that has proved superior to hers by almost every measure. As a veteran of Democratic presidential campaigns who is not affiliated with any candidate this time around puts it, the Clinton forces "get to every state later. They spend less. They don't get the best people."
And now Obama is making inroads with every Democratic constituency, including the ones that Clinton counted as hers. In deeply Democratic Maryland, for instance, Obama won rural voters, union households, white men, independents, African Americans and young people, and held his own among Hispanics — the makings of a broad and tough-to-overcome coalition. Obama's campaign now claims a 136-vote lead among pledged delegates, those elected through primaries and caucuses. "We believe that it's next to impossible for Senator Clinton to close the delegate count," Obama campaign manager David Plouffe told reporters the morning after the Potomac primaries.
Much of the blame, from both within and outside the campaign, has been aimed at Clinton's chief strategist, Mark Penn. "He never adjusted," says a prominent Democrat. "I don't think he knows how to do primaries. He doesn't know how to do what is essentially a family fight." But that explanation misses a larger possibility: that Bill and Hillary Clinton, who came of age in politics a generation ago, no longer have the touch for the electorate they once did.
Now, having blown through more than $120 million, Clinton's campaign is struggling to build a campaign from scratch in Ohio and Texas, with political observers in near agreement that a failure to win both could be fatal.
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One of the continuing challenges for the Clinton campaign in the lead-up to the March 4 primaries could be money.
Political veterans say Clinton will need a minimum of $3 million to $5 million to compete in Ohio, and even more in Texas. Both states are large: Ohio has seven major media markets; Texas nearly three times as many.Clinton's fund-raising has picked up considerably since the day after Super Tuesday, when the campaign revealed she had been forced to loan herself $5 million to make it through January. "People know she really needs the money," says national finance co-chairman Alan Patricof. But her fund-raising is still no match for Obama's Internet-fueled money machine, which has been bringing in about $1 million a day.
On the invitation to a luncheon meeting on Feb. 13 in New York City, top Clinton fund raisers were "encouraged to bring at least one prospective Finance Committee member" and "asked to commit to raising a minimum of $25,000 for Hillary Clinton for President."And the campaign's most effective fund raiser of all will be picking up the pace. Bill Clinton has scheduled more than a dozen fund raisers before Texas and Ohio. That included one on the night of the luncheon, at the Clintons' residence in Washington. The alert went out to money men: "We have a handful of slots available tomorrow evening for cocktails with President Bill Clinton at Whitehaven, the Clintons' home. Do you know of one person who would be interested in attending and contributing $1,000?" That, in politics, is what passes for hand-to-hand combat. The battle has been joined; the question for the Clintons, however, is whether it is already too late.
moreSeems like the money raised should have gone toward campaigning:
An overhaul of Clinton's senior staff had been rumored for months as her national lead shrank and she struggled to keep pace with Obama's prodigious fundraising.
Clinton has raised about $130 million,
but she was recently compelled to loan her campaign $5 million out of her personal funds. (The campaign has since paid it back.) Privately, some donors have said the campaign was slow to use the Internet to raise money, relying too heavily on the Clintons' old fundraising network.
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