Miss Management

By Howard Kurtz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, April 10, 2008 9:13 AM

After Howard Dean flamed out in the 2004 primaries, I wrote a lengthy piece about the "nasty civil war that crippled decision-making and devastated morale" in his campaign. Some aides "just plain despised each other." There were tales of temper tantrums, lying, internal spying, mismanaged money and retaliation against reporters, with the campaign manager repeatedly threatening to quit.

All this conflict was a disservice to Dean, although the former Vermont governor was responsible for the operation. But imagine if Dean had won Iowa and rolled to the nomination, as seemed likely at one point. Would anyone have cared if his campaign was one big dysfunctional family?

I exhume this history because a new, post-Penn narrative in the media says Hillary Clinton has run such a lousy campaign that she'd probably be a lousy president. Had she won Iowa, we wouldn't be having this discussion.

While I think most campaigns are riven by strife and infighting, this is absolutely fair game for criticism and analysis. In the course of long and brutal elections, voters get a chance to glimpse how the candidate operates under pressure. No one is really making national-security decisions after 3 a.m. phone calls, so we look at how the contenders deal with debates, ads, sinking polls, shrinking treasuries and staff gaffes--all of which give us a rough approximation of how that person would manage a huge bureaucracy and cope with difficult decisions. Running for president is in some ways an absurd marathon that deters all but the most insanely ambitious, but it is, on some level, a character test.

Jim VandeHei and David Paul Kuhn make that case in Politico (which, you may recall, contends that the race is basically over anyway):

"Hillary Rodham Clinton wants voters to decide the nomination based on who can coolly and competently run the country. She had better hope they don't study her recent campaign too closely for the answer. Clinton has overseen two major staff shake-ups in two months. She has left a trail of unpaid bills and unhappy vendors and had to loan her own campaign $5 million to keep it afloat in January. Her campaign badly underestimated her main adversary, Barack Obama, miscalculated the importance of organizing caucus states and was caught flat-footed after failing to lock up the nomination on Super Tuesday.

"It would be easy to dismiss all of this as fairly conventional political stumbling -- if she hadn't made her supreme readiness and managerial competence the central issue of her presidential campaign."

In other words: Ready on Day One?

Peter Beinart hits the same theme:

"Of the three candidates still in the 2008 race, Obama has run the best campaign by far. McCain's was a top-heavy, slow-moving, money-hemorrhaging Hindenburg that eventually exploded, leaving the Arizona senator to resurrect his bankrupt candidacy through sheer force of will. Clinton's campaign has been marked by vicious infighting and organizational weakness, as manifested by her terrible performance in caucus states."

As does E.J. Dionne:

"The most striking critiques of Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign have come not from her opponents or her enemies but from her most loyal friends.

"Since December, I have been hearing a steady stream of worries from Clinton partisans who took Barack Obama's challenge seriously from the start. These loyalists felt her campaign was misreading the nature of the political year, the state of the Democratic Party, the organizational requirements of a long struggle for the nomination and the complexity of the party's attitudes toward both the candidate and former president Clinton."

At Salon, Camille Paglia has--how shall I put this?--a more personal take, questioning whether HRC is surrounded by "girly men":

"There is a strangely static and claustrophobic quality to the fiercely loyal cult she has gathered around her since her first lady years . . .

"I agree that the male staff who Hillary attracts are slick, geeky weasels or rancid, asexual cream puffs. (One of the latter, the insufferable Mark Penn, just got the heave-ho after he played Hillary for a patsy with the Colombian government.) If I were to hazard a guess, I'd say Hillary is reconstituting the toxic hierarchy of her childhood household, with her on top instead of her drill-sergeant father."

Uh, whatever you say.

There's also a major split among the McCainiacs (remember the big showdown last summer when longtime adviser John Weaver left?) But you hear less about that because John McCain won.

"The reality of McCainland . . . is that, despite its inhabitants' loyalty to McCain, they don't have much loyalty to one another," says Jason Zengerle in the New Republic. " 'The McCain internal world is very dysfunctional,' says one McCain adviser. 'But the overwhelming function is the huge love everyone has for McCain. That's the functional part that holds it all together.'

"Indeed, it's precisely the passion McCain's advisers feel for him that causes them to fight with one another. Less a politician captaining a team of rivals than a patriarch presiding over a brood of squabbling children vying for Daddy's affection, McCain has built a political family that has served him well enough to carry him to the threshold of the White House. But now, as that family tries to carry McCain over that threshold, the animosities within McCainland continue to persist. And, as much as ever, they have the potential to violently erupt."

Beore I move on, check out this Politico piece about Oprah:

"Seventy-four percent of Americans reported favorable impressions of Oprah in a January 2007 Gallup/USA Today poll."

Then she endorsed Obama.

"Almost instantly, Oprah's popularity in America plummeted. An August 2007 CBS News poll showed only 61 percent of Americans were favorably disposed to her -- a considerable drop of 13 percentage points from a similar survey conducted just seven months prior."

Then Winfrey started campaigning with Obama.

"By the time Fox News/Opinion Dynamics asked Americans about their attitudes toward Oprah in a survey conducted about 10 days later, Dec. 18-19, Oprah's favorability ratings had dropped even further -- to 55 percent -- the lowest level of favorability ever registered for Oprah in opinion surveys."

I remember saying this plunge into politics might be something of a risk for her, but I'm surprised at those figures.

You'll recall there was a bit of hand-wringing when Hillary adviser Harold Ickes acknowledged that he was discussing the Jeremiah Wright controversy with superdelegates. My feeling is, why shouldn't the Clintonites discuss it; everyone else is. Now comes Lanny Davis, who's become the campaign's top television surrogate (as he was for Bill Clinton during the Monica mess) with this WSJ op-ed:

"I have tried to get over my unease surrounding Barack Obama's response to the sermons and writings of his pastor, Rev. Jeremiah Wright of Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago. But the unanswered questions remain.

"I am a strong supporter of and a substantial fundraiser for Hillary Clinton for president (though in this column I speak only for myself). I still believe she should and will be the Democratic nominee. But if Sen. Obama wins the nomination, he needs to understand that this issue goes well beyond Clinton partisans. Now is the time to address these questions, not later.

"Clearly Mr. Obama does not share the extremist views of Rev. Wright. He is a tolerant and honorable person. But that is not the issue. The questions remain: Why did he stay a member of the congregation? Why didn't he speak up earlier? And why did he reward Rev. Wright with a campaign position even after knowing of his comments? . . .

"If Mr. Obama doesn't show a willingness to try to answer all the questions now, John McCain and the Republican attack machine will not waste a minute pressuring him to do so if he is the Democratic Party's choice in the fall."

Not to mention the Clinton attack machine.

Time columnist Joe Klein throws a haymaker at Lanny:

"What is actually going on here? If Davis is sure that 'Mr. Obama does not share the extremist views of Rev. Wright,' then what's the big deal? Uh, Politics. Davis is trying to make sure that white people in Pennsylvania don't forget that Obama's former pastor has said some awful things about our country. This, sadly, has been standard operating procedure for Republican spinmeisters throughout that party's ascent and descent over the past 40 years."

Liberal bloggers are none too happy, including Joe Sudbay at Americablog:

"It's pretty clear that the Clinton surrogate is just aiding and abetting John McCain. And, when you know that surrogate is the despicable Lanny Davis, it makes sense. In 2006, Davis, after all, [was] one of Joe Lieberman's most vociferous supporters in 2006. Note again where Davis ran his op-ed: The Wall Street Journal's editorial pages. I guess if Hillary can cozy up to Richard Mellon Scaife, every other right wing venue is acceptable, too."

Across the spectrum, Tom Bevan at Real Clear Politics agrees with the basic argument:

"Davis is probably overstating his case when he suggests 'many loyal, progressive Democrats remain troubled by this issue.' I don't think we've seen much evidence of that at all. In fact, the polls seem to indicate the opposite. But I do think Davis is correct when he warns about the potential fallout among Reagan Democrats and independents, and he's absolutely right that the issue is not going away. As sure as the sun rises in the East, a Republican-leaning 527 is going to use Rev. Wright against Obama in the general.

"This may offend Joe Klein's political sensibilities, but it's clearly within bounds. To most people, Obama's twenty year relationship with Rev. Wright (not to mention his long association with shady dealer Tony Rezko) goes directly to the question of Obama's much-touted judgment."

Klein had criticized Lanny for spreading "poison."

I've never seen so many campaign surrogates get into trouble in just a few months. The Nation's John Nichols pounces on the latest example:

"The John McCain campaign is all excited about a statement that West Virginia Senator Jay Rockefeller, the chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, made about McCain's service in Vietnam.

"Unlike other war heroes who have been shot down in battle and risked their lives behind enemy lines, such as former South Dakota Senator George McGovern, McCain has chosen to make his military service a central feature of his political campaigning. Unfortunately, McCain and his supporters are hyper-sensitive about discussion's of the Arizona senator's service as a fighter pilot and a prisoner of war.

"So they go crazy whenever anyone deviates from the campaign's official story-line.

"Rockefeller did that when he told the Charleston Gazette in an interview that, 'McCain was a fighter pilot, who dropped laser-guided missiles from 35,000 feet. He was long gone when they hit. What happened when they [the missiles] get to the ground? He doesn't know. You have to care about the lives of people. McCain never gets into those issues.' "

On the left, Carpetbagger's Steve Benen doesn't defend the remark:

"I'll gladly concede that Rockefeller's comments were cheap and definitely warranted an apology, which he promptly offered. And I suppose I don't blame the McCain campaign for trying to capitalize on every available opportunity.

"But in general, folks really can't work themselves into too big a dither every time a pol makes a foolish attack."

And in the where-do-they-get-these-people category, the Chicago Sun-Times reports:

"Moving to nip in the bud some potential bad press, White House hopeful Barack Obama's campaign persuaded a delegate to step down after she was ticketed for calling her neighbor's African-American children 'monkeys.' "

Pointing out that McCain again had a momentary confusion about Sunnis and Shiites at this week's hearings, the Washington Monthly's Kevin Drum says:

"I suppose that eventually the press is bound to notice that McCain is seriously confused about the religious and political dynamics of Iraq and the greater Middle East, right? Maybe around December or so."

With recent polls showing Hillary's Pennsylvania lead shrinking from double digits to six points or so, Atlantic's Marc Ambinder offers a few reasons:

"1. Obama is on the air there now and his invisible army is organizing.

"2. Clinton has been the major focus of the national press and the local press; the coverage has been unflattering; her mistakes are accumulating. There has been no corresponding attention on Obama's fitness for the office.

"3. Obama spent five consecutive days in the state on a bus tour, and his campaign aggressively bracketed the visit with local news interviews and targeted local advertisements."

Some fascinating numbers in this Pew survey:

"While Obama's positive personal image plays an important role in his high favorable ratings, the polling found that his ratings are more influenced by how he makes voters feel than by specific characteristics they attributed to him. In particular, views that Obama inspires hope and pride are the strongest determinants of a person's opinion of him. In other words, he is a charismatic candidate who has made large numbers of Democratic voters feel good, and this is even more important to them than specific perceptions of him.

"In contrast, Clinton's image is more driven by opinions about her own qualities, rather than the emotions she engenders in others."

Sure, but look at these figures. Hard to like: 43 percent said Hillary, 13 percent said Barack.

Phony: 30 percent said Hillary, 16 percent said Barack.

That's tough to overcome.

What's this? News Corp. may join Microsoft's bid for Yahoo? Will Rupert Murdoch end up owning everything?

Mirthala Salinas, the L.A. anchor who had an affair with Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, says it was a "learning experience." I'm sure it was. Plus, she's now engaged--to someone else.

And I've saved the hottest media news for last: Katie Couric and CBS are talking about the growing possibility that she'll give up the anchor chair after the election.