Mark Penn -- Meet Bob Shrum

::::::::

It’s Tuesday night, February 19th. A day that might live in semi-infamy. Barack Obama just blew Hillary away in Wisconsin. And folks were saying it could be close and she might even have an outside chance…

Mark Penn – say hello to Bob Shrum. This does not feel like New Hampshire, Mark. This does not feel like California. It feels like Costa Rica which is where I'd slip away to if I were you.

Who are these guys? I’m no male underwear model myself but just looking at these two dudes – and throw in the terrifying Howard Wolfson for good measure – I mean they’re just so… unappetizing. Is that mean? Is that Beautism? What do they call it… Lookism. I feel bad about it but this is America. Looks count. Imagine being in close quarters week after week, month after month.

Speeches. Speeches where your life passes before you. I would almost weep as I watched John Kerry turn from being Rambo in ‘Nam to storming the barricades in ‘60’s Washington to issuing verbal bars of lead in 2004.  Clank.

And those crushingly mediocre campaign commercials. Not that Obama’s were anything special but they were better. You don’t appeal to working class families by constantly showing images of working class families. Who wants to be reminded they’re stuck in dead-end jobs? “This is just temporary, man – I could still win the lottery – this is America.”

All I’m saying is these are defensive strategies hatched in a roomful of people with big egos and big resumes, but deep down they know they don’t have the faintest idea what’s gonna happen when they push their little sailboat out onto the pond. That mean, rich kid with the big, remote-controlled boat just kerblooey sent it to the bottom.

So they play to not make mistakes. They keep their jobs.

If you haven’t seen Primary Colors, shame on you. A fine, overlooked film. You see the Clinton brain trust when it was a shiny new underdog. An Unter-schweinhunt . They hung out with this black family in rural Arkansas that owned a barbeque place and they would talk late into the warm, Arkansas night sitting at checkered, waxed-cloth-covered picnic tables under strings of white bulbs. Of course, Bill knocked up the daughter but let’s not worry about that for the moment. It was just a movie for Chrissakes.

Bill had this guy named James Carville. Q: Who would be more fun to hang out with than Carville issuing pithy country metaphors about boars and hounds and hedgehogs. I mean the guy was a walking, talking porch complete with rocking chairs, dogs and cold beer.

Carville was a story-teller. Where was Hillary’s story? What was Hillary’s story? Cat got your tongue? Bubble bubble toil and trouble and all her smart people were in that bubble where fear and focus groups reign. Is having a wee bit of imagination such a terrible thing? Presenting her as this inevitable CEO – I wish I’d been at that meeting. It must have broken up early. Just as some junior staffer was about to raise her hand and ask, “what about a little excitement?” But she saved herself the humiliation of Wolfson coming back at her, dripping with scorn saying, “honey, we know what people want, ok?” Then he’d catch her in the hallway and ask if she was trying to make him look bad in there? And she’d walk away puzzled and wonder why they were there to begin with. Was it simply to not make her boss look bad? Or did it have something to do with what did it have to do with again?

Rewind… what was that? “Changed” the system?  Hmmm.

Look. What was the biggest cliché in the whole world the last couple of years? “Narrative.” How sick were you of hearing that word? No one could say it without droning. Be that as it may – I ask again. What was Hillary’s narrative??? I’m smart. I like the Clintons, I should be able to figure this out. Hmm. Ok. Now I get it. They thought she had a bad narrative and so they tried to skip past it to right now.

Was her story really that bad?

They must have thought so. The bookish, brilliant girl with thick, oversized glasses that she kept pushing up on her runny nose. Didn’t care how she looked because she was too busy studying. Annoying. It used to bug the shit out of me right after a math test when Brad Doores would unfailingly say, “man, I think I really blew that one.” Yeah, right. Which meant getting a mere A instead of an A+. Grrrr.

Well, here’s a narrative for you. I just spent all of four seconds straining my brain so just think what you could have done with four years. Maybe she could be – a Mother figure?  No?  Maybe your non-nurturing, CEO was a better choice, Marky. That’s it – she could be the tough but fair mother we never had. The Hillary in Primary Colors who put up with so much, and when it was her turn she’d do it right, finally and have the whippin' switch out and would give anyone who messed up a whack to make tears jump from their eyes. Like the heroic, black moms who raised kids with nothing but both fear and love. Plenty of love. The mothers they cry over when accepting awards.

Oh, well. It probably wouldn’t have mattered anyway because when you have a wave vs. a machine, the machine just gets wet.

It’s tough when you’ve lived your entire life trying to prove you could make it in a man’s world. Did someone not have the guts to tell you that you can’t come from a place of having a chip on your shoulder – even if you didn’t put it there? Where was her inner Bill? One day with her and I’da found it. Or invented it or both. Paul Begala talks about this a lot. Who? Oh, Begala. The other guy that wasn't working for Hill’s campaign that got that other guy elected. Twice.

They coulda sold Hillary. They didn’t even try. There’s always a way. That’s why you get the big buckeroos, Mark. C’mon, get off your fat ass and get some grainy, old Ektachrome footage of Hill at a little kids’ birthday party. The kids start a food fight, right? She says now children, that’s no way to… Wham! Some adorable little black kid accidentally nails her right in the kisser with a nice, big piece of chocolate cake that slides down onto her silk blouse. After a suspense beat, she gets this gleam in her eye and suddenly, she throws it right back at him. FADE OUT as they all scream with laughter and the food flies.

They never call. Never.