Monday, February 25, 2008

Why Hillary Clinton's campaign smells like rotten Apple

Announcing his candidacy, Ralph Nader said his campaign would be frugal; that there will be "None of this huge waste on political consultants who have really messed up Hillary Clinton's campaign." Flashback to the recent debate with Obama: Hillary Clinton repeated her charge that Obama had "plagarized" a portion of his speech. Do we care? Is Hillary running for vice-principle of the local high school? Who exactly is behind Hillary's lame campaign?

It seems that Hillary Clinton has accumulated over $10 million in bills -- both paid and unpaid -- to Penn, Schoen & Berland, the consulting firm of her main consultant Mark Penn. Of Burson-Marsteller is a subsidiary of WPP Group. Birnbaum writes in the Washington Post:
. . . Penn's parent company employs as lobbyists and advisers an ex-chairman of the Republican National Committee (Edward W. Gillespie), a former House GOP leader (Robert S. Walker), a top GOP fundraiser (Wayne L. Berman), and the former media adviser to President Bush (Mark McKinnon).
Regarding Hillary's choice of consultants, Birnbaum quotes Fred Wertheimer, president of Democracy 21, a watchdog group: "This is a classic example of how big money has inextricably intertwined the campaign advising and lobbying worlds of modern-day Washington with potential conflicts of interest all over the place."

And to think these big money marketing consultants are not even very good at what they do!

Many years ago, the board of Apple Computer made the mistake of dumping Steve Jobs while retaining a man named Scully as CEO (Scully's previous claim to fame had been marketing Pepsi). The stock tanked and product deteriorated. Hillary's campaign reminds me of old Apple, before the return of Jobs. Hillary Clinton, like Steve Jobs, has effectively been pushed out of her own organization by a self-promoting marketeer. We saw something similar happen to Al Gore in 2000.

Will Hillary make a comeback?

2 comments:

  1. I think Obama will win the elctions!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Hillary is no Steve Jobs.
    To compare a great American pirate, innovator, pioneer and businessman with a politician who has never created anything original in her life is irresponsible.
    For your comparison to make any sense would require Hillary to resign from her campaign and return to private life for ten years, create two revolutionary companies (Next and Pixar for Steve) and return in 2018 to take the democratic nomination.
    2018 - the date for Hillary's comeback!

    ReplyDelete

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