Inside the Mind of Mark Penn

The September issue of The Atlantic gives an account of Burson-Marsteller CEO Mark Penn‘s involvement in the Hillary Clinton campaign stretching back to 2003.

The memos and emails show Penn’s aggressive strategy at odds with Howard Wolfson and others on staff. His theory of targeting “Invisibles” while attacking Barack Obama at every turn, as less American, went against those seeking a softer Hillary. His demographics are summed up in one line in a memo: “If we double perform with WOMEN, LOWER AND MIDDLE CLASS VOTERS, then we have about 55% of the voters.”

Writer Joshua Green follows Penn and the campaign through the Spring when he seemed to regain control, culminating with a “Path to Victory” strategy document on March 30 that ended with a plea to hit harder, without hesitation over the next two months.

Four days later, he was derailed when his lobbying efforts behalf of a free-trade agreement with Colombia that Clinton opposed were exposed.

We wont know till November if Penn was right, if Obama was dinged permanently by Clinton’s attacks, if it was merely a matter of the campaign firing together on all cylinders, and if the Edwards factor made the “Invisibles” math impossible. It’s a fascinating look in to the mind of the Microtrends man Mark Penn. For just the highlights, check out The Fix blog.

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