It Takes a (Potemkin) Village: Mark Penn, Working the Advance Team

Do you know what a http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potemkin_village">Potemkin Village is?

Modern historians argue about the degree to which this practice actually took place, and about whether or not the Empress was "in on it," or whether she was also duped.

Thankfully, modern political tours include live coverage, to provide a more thorough and textured record.

As the Empress' stagecoach rattled out of town at a gallop, the advance team probably got the next venue ready. Whether or not she deigned to give a word of thanks on her way out of town is still a matter of historical inquiry.

Please pardon me if I see Penn as the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grigori_Aleksandrovich_Potemkin">Potemkin of our age.

- Dave

Isn't it Time for Mark Penn to Leave Burson-Marsteller?
Posted November 12, 2007 | 11:18 AM (EST)


My colleague at The Nation, Ari Berman, has done more than any journalist to shine some light on how pollster-strategist Mark Penn, head honcho at PR giant Burson-Marsteller, and perhaps the most important figure in Hillary Clinton's campaign, poses a real dilemma for the candidate. Penn heads a firm that has represented everyone from union busters to big tobacco, and more recently Blackwater. (According to a Marsteller spokesperson, it was a subsidiary, BKSH & Associates, run by GOP operative Charlie Black, which helped Erik Prince prepare for congressional hearings after his employees killed civilians in Iraq).It would seem difficult to find a more controversial client than Blackwater but Penn's firm has just been retained by Spin Master.

Who is Spin Master? It turns out that Spin Master distributes Aqua Dots, a toy that was recalled last week because it contains a glue ingredient that when ingested is broken down by the body to make GHB, the "date rape" drug, which can cause unconsciousness and even death. (The Consumer Product Safety Commission says the number of children sickened by Aqua Dots has risen from two to nine in the past week.)

Penn has repeatedly stated that he has no direct contact with controversial clients like Blackwater or unionbusters. But what about the good old-fashioned American principles of responsibility and accountability -- principles which his candidate likes to invoke on the campaign trail? As Ari Berman has pointed out, the dilemma for Clinton is that Penn's firm represents many of the interests whose influence she has vowed to curtail. But as kids get sick from poisonous toys, how can Clinton keep in her corner, as her chief strategist, a man who has even limited involvement with a firm like Burson-Marsteller? Isn't it time that Clinton ask Penn to choose: my campaign to make this a safer country or a PR firm which has too many clients undermining that agenda?

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/katrina-vanden-heuvel/isnt-it-time-for-mark-pe_b_72206.html

"In '06, with Penn at the helm, the company gave 57% of Campaign Contrib to GOP"



Polling Czar



After the 1994 election, Democrats had just lost both houses of Congress, and President Clinton was floundering in the polls. At the urging of his wife, he turned to Dick Morris, a friend from their time in Arkansas. Morris brought in two pollsters from New York, Doug Schoen and his partner, Mark Penn, a portly, combative workaholic. Morris decided what to poll and Penn polled it. They immediately pushed Clinton to the right, enacting the now-infamous strategy of "triangulation," which co-opted Republican policies like welfare reform and tax cuts and emphasized small-bore issues that supposedly cut across the ideological divide. "They were the ones who said, 'Make the '96 election about nothing except V-chips and school uniforms,'" says a former adviser to Bill. When Morris got caught with a call girl, Penn became the most important adviser in Clinton's second term. "In a White House where polling is virtually a religion," the Washington Post reported in 1996, "Penn is the high priest."

Penn, who had previously worked in the business world for companies like Texaco and Eli Lilly, brought his corporate ideology to the White House. After moving to Washington he aggressively expanded his polling firm, Penn, Schoen & Berland (PSB). It was said that Penn was the only person who could get Bill Clinton and Bill Gates on the same line. Penn's largest client was Microsoft, and he saw no contradiction between working for both the plaintiff and the defense in what was at the time the country's largest antitrust case. A variety of controversial clients enlisted PSB. The firm defended Procter & Gamble's Olestra from charges that the food additive caused anal leakage, blamed Texaco's bankruptcy on greedy jurors and market-tested genetically modified foods for Monsanto. PSB introduced to consulting the concept of "inoculation": shielding corporations from scandal through clever advertising and marketing.

In 2000 Penn became the chief architect of Hillary's Senate victory in New York, persuading her, in a rerun of '96, to eschew big themes and relentlessly focus on poll-tested pothole politics, such as suburban transit lines and dairy farming upstate. Following that election, Penn became a very rich man--and an even more valued commodity in the business world (Hillary paid him $1 million for her re-election campaign in '06 and $277,000 in the first quarter of this year). The massive PR empire WPP Group acquired Penn's polling firm for an undisclosed sum in 2001 and four years later named him worldwide CEO of one of its most prized properties, the PR firm Burson-Marsteller (B-M). A key player in the decision to hire Penn was Howard Paster, President Clinton's chief lobbyist to Capitol Hill and an influential presence inside WPP. "Clients of stature come to Mark constantly for counsel," says Paster, who informally advises Hillary, explaining the hire. The press release announcing Penn's promotion noted his work "developing and implementing deregulation informational programs for the electric utilities industry and in the financial services sector." The release blithely ignored how utility deregulation contributed to the California electricity crisis manipulated by Enron and the blackout of 2003, which darkened much of the Northeast and upper Midwest.

Burson-Marsteller is hardly a natural fit for a prominent Democrat. The firm has represented everyone from the Argentine military junta to Union Carbide after the 1984 Bhopal disaster in India, in which thousands were killed when toxic fumes were released by one of its plants, to Royal Dutch Shell, which has been accused of colluding with the Nigerian government in committing major human rights violations. B-M pioneered the use of pseudo-grassroots front groups, known as "astroturfing," to wage stealth corporate attacks against environmental and consumer groups. It set up the National Smokers Alliance on behalf of Philip Morris to fight tobacco regulation in the early 1990s. Its current clients include major players in the finance, pharmaceutical and energy industries. In 2006, with Penn at the helm, the company gave 57 percent of its campaign contributions to Republican candidates.

-snip
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20070604/berman

... it's greatly appreciated.

- Dave

:dem:

Volunteers brought from out of state used to fill the ranks at appearances in order to make it appear that there is greater support among the local electorate that there is in fact.

To make it look like there's a groundswell of young support?

; )

- Dave

Apparently, the campaign was picking up the tab for per diem expenses.

What good is it to pay for local TV coverage when few people show up.

... I'd start asking students on camera to pull out their driver's license, to see what state it's from.

; )

- Dave

but it's against state law to ask for ID, just like it is here in Maine.

It's illegal to put someone on the spot on camera?

- Dave

:evilgrin:

... hitting up these Potemkin Villagers on their way out of the event, onto the bus.

:evilgrin:

- Dave

With buckets of hot tar and sacks of chicken feathers to remind them that they best get off the bus in their home states.

from other states to make it look like the crowds are much larger than they would be otherwise? How much do they pay?

Inquiring minds want to know.

... do you wanna bet that some "inside the campaign" YouTubing ends up being released by an undercover college student, who figures out that s/he's gonna make a lot more money that way?

- Dave

for Hillary's Presidential campaign. The boys have one of their own running her campaign and they have piles of manure ready to shovel onto the airwaves.

Is he best friends with Karl Rove?!?

But if I ever catch them at Morton's together, I'm running and grabbing my camera.

- Dave

What did he do?

In every way.

- Dave

... as Orwell might say.

As Clinton seeks to re-write the rules ex post facto, it's like watching the pigs of Animal Farm.

- Dave

Did I miss a story?

... with Mark Penn?

- Dave

What Potemkin village are you talking about - did I miss a story?

... the story about the lack of a post-polls event in SC last night?

- Dave

I'm sorry to keep kicking your thread since all you want to do is throw out teasers. I'm not a Clinton supporter, by any means, if that is the reason for your reaction. I simply wanted to know why you are saying Penn pulled some kind of Potemkin trick, but I guess that is too much to ask. I saw Bill give her concession speech last night in TN, and then I heard some of her speech later on from somewhere else. But whatever, so sorry to have bothered you by asking an honest question. Carry on with your mysterious comments.

... it is fair to say that Penn (if not the client) deemed it prudent to hurry out of SC to the next stage-managed affair.

- Dave

Do you have some kind of mandate to be slightly cryptic?

I understand the general idea of your post, but you have also taken two opportunities to respond without enlightening the above poster (or myself) as to what you are talking about.

Sorry to flame, but that's kind of annoying.

... is pretty darn clear.

- Dave

... that dwarfs the handshake non-moment.

- Dave