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Memos show Clinton turmoil

BY CRAIG GORDON AND TOM BRUNE | craig.gordon@newsday.com; tom.brune@newsday.com

August 13, 2008

WASHINGTON - In a fresh postmortem on Hillary Rodham Clinton's presidential bid, newly published staff memos and e-mails reveal a campaign hobbled by internal rivalries, faulty planning, bloated spending - and perhaps most important, Clinton's own failure to make the hard decisions.

Clinton offered herself to voters as a hyper-competent executive ready to be president from day one. But atop her own campaign, she was a hesitant leader, who allowed bitter infighting to fester among staffers over whether to go negative against Barack Obama, according to the Atlantic magazine.

The most bare-knuckled lines of attack came from Clinton's chief strategist, Mark Penn, who urged Clinton to highlight Obama's "lack of American roots" due to his upbringing in Indonesia and Hawaii - saying he could only win if he faced Attila the Hun.

But Clinton didn't embrace Penn's flag-waving approach, which campaign aides insist was never seriously considered.

The article also says that Clinton at times grew frustrated and short-tempered - including on the morning after her stunning third-place finish in Iowa in January, when aides on a call were silent. Clinton's camp dismissed the story as "inside-the-Beltway gossip" and "old news." And former campaign aides sharply disputed the notion of Clinton as an indecisive leader, with one campaign veteran saying, "Nobody seems to want to remember the fact that we had so many successes and come-from-behind victories in this campaign ... and they are due in large part to Senator Clinton's leadership."

But the e-mails and memos offer vivid new details about what had long been reported - that Clinton's headquarters was beset by caustic internal battles involving Penn and former President Bill Clinton, who wanted to forcefully attack Obama, and others who wanted the New York senator to take a more positive tack. At one point, it was Bill Clinton - and not Hillary - who approved the famed 3 a.m. phone call ad.

Adding to the turmoil was the fact that the campaign had little strategy and no money left to seriously compete in the post-Super Tuesday contests - having burned through $106 million before Iowa. That allowed Obama to win 12 straight contests and effectively wrap up the nomination.

In the end, the campaign's strategy came to reflect some of the internal turmoil, as Clinton veered from attacking Obama to emphasizing her personal side.

Penn did offer some advice in March 2007 that proved on the mark - Clinton's path to victory lay with women and lower- and working-class voters.

But by the time Clinton finally settled on that strategy to win the later primaries, it was too late.

Excerpts from the memos

"All of these articles about his boyhood in Indonesia and his life in Hawaii are geared towards showing his background is diverse, multicultural and putting that in a new light ... 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 in his values." Strategist Mark Penn, from a March 19, 2007, memo to Hillary Rodham Clinton advising her to attack Barack Obama for his "lack of American roots."

"The right knows Obama is unelectable except perhaps against Attila the Hun, and a third party would come in then anyway." Penn, from the same memo.

"This has been a very instructive call, talking to myself." Clinton, before angrily hanging up on a staff conference call the day after coming in third in Iowa in January. "She complained of being outmaneuvered in Iowa and being painted as the establishment candidate," according to the Atlantic - but was met with near-silence.

"STOP IT!!!! I have help my tongue for weeks. After this morning's WP story, no longer. This makes me sick. This circular firing squad that is occurring is unattractive, unprofessional, unconscionable, and unacceptable ... It must stop." Robert Barnett, a Clinton lawyer and Washington insider, from a March 6, 2008, e-mail to campaign staff after a Washington Post story detailed the infighting.