MarkPenn.com

The Washington Post Topic A: How to fix the Senate?

How to Fix the Senate?
The Washington Post asked Mark Penn and others to name one idea — other than reforming the much-discussed filibuster — that might get Congress moving.

MARK PENN
CEO of Burson-Marsteller; adviser to Hillary Clinton’s 2008 presidential campaign; pollster and adviser to Bill Clinton from 1995 through 2000.

Ironically, one of the Senate’s greatest issues today stems directly from a most-cherished principle: the separation of powers.

The doctrine was designed to promote checks and balances, so that each branch of government could operate without undue interference from the other. But perhaps one of the biggest problems with the Senate and the government is too much separation at a time when they need more engagement. In short, too much separation can lead to isolation. The health-care plan is a case in point: In 1994, it came from the executive branch; this time, from the legislative branch — but the result is still the same. They needed to create a truly joint plan.

One way to break down these barriers is to have regular Question Time, American-style. Once a week let’s have leaders of both parties in Congress throw questions at the president and have the executive branch respond with its own questions — all on TV, of course. This regular discourse will also restore the Senate to the role it once held as the place where the big issues were discussed by the big thinkers.

Question Time would get our legislators out of their cocoons and force the kind of engagement that it takes to really solve problems.

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Pollster Mark Penn to donate collection of presidential polls to George Washington University

Mark Penn, an influential politico who has been dubbed the “king of polling,” announced his plans to gift a portion of his personal collection of polls to establish the Society of Presidential Pollsters within GW’s Graduate School of Political Management.

In an interview with The Hatchet from his office in downtown D.C. Friday afternoon, Penn said he plans to donate polls from 1994 to 2000, when he served as the presidential pollster for President Bill Clinton.

Penn joined Clinton’s administration in 1995 after the Democrats faced heavy losses during the 1994 midterm elections. Penn is credited with creating a campaign strategy that helped clinch the White House for Clinton in 1996. He was also part of the team that crafted Clinton’s response to the Monica Lewinsky scandal and impeachment trial. Penn also worked with former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates and Hillary Clinton during her Senate and presidential campaigns.

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Obama should learn from Clinton, political strategist says

What the Obama presidency needs now is “a good dose of Clintonism,” the chief strategist for Hillary Clinton’s 2008 presidential campaign said today.

Mark Penn, who first went to work for the Clintons in 1994 when then-President Bill Clinton hired him as an adviser following the Democratic Party’s dramatic losses in that year’s midterm elections, said Obama faces many of the same challenges President Clinton faced 16 years ago.

Clinton bounced back from those losses with “some small things like balancing the budget, reforming welfare and creating 24 million jobs,” Penn said during a talk at the University of Arkansas Clinton School of Public Service.

Clinton learned from the 1994 losses and began “moving the country to the center in a way that people felt the president was listening to them,” Penn said, adding that Clinton’s successes could be traced back to the fact that he had clearly defined strategies.
“As you recall, President Clinton had a very clear economic strategy,” he said. “Elements of his economic strategy were popular; some were not so popular. He believed in expanding trade, he believed in expanding investment in infrastructure, education — math and science. He believed in closing the federal deficit. Those three elements were a strategy that everybody understood.”

Obama should follow suit, according to Penn…

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Obama’s first year: Mark Penn’s take
President’s slide in the polls is “cause for concern,” but not irreversible.

Mark J. Penn, who served as the chief strategist for Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign, has some views about where President Barack Obama stands near the end of his first year in office.

Obama’s sliding support in the polls is “a real cause for concern,” the veteran pollster says, but the president’s situation is not irreversible.

Penn is worldwide CEO of Burson-Marsteller, a public relations and public affairs firm. He ran polls for former President Bill Clinton in 1995 through 2000 and also ran weekly White House strategy meetings.

This is what Penn said in a conversation with the Washington Bureau:

Q: How serious is the overall drop off in the president’s job approval rating? Is this a bad sign for Democrats in the upcoming mid-terms? What advice would you give to the president to restore those numbers to January 2009 levels?

Penn: “The president’s numbers are a real cause for concern for himself and the party – but they certainly can be reversed at this point.

“It’s only been a year and people are uneasy but not opinion is not yet set and is quite mushy. Progress on the economy and in Afghanistan are the big things that can make a difference. I don’t think the president can do a lot right now with words – the public expects that the first year is going to be the foundation and by the second year they are looking for results. If he delivers them, these poll numbers will quickly reverse themselves.

“Working for six years with President Clinton certainly taught me the lesson that how a president can change public opinion over time as in 1995 he had about a 32 percent approval rating and almost doubled it by 1996 – president Clinton said he would focus on the economy like a laser, he did, and the public quickly recognized the progress.”

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The Hill: FCC disputes stimulus numbers

The Federal Communications Commission is disputing numbers cited in today’s The Hill story about stimulus money given to Democratic pollster Mark Penn’s businesses for a public relations campaign surrounding the digital television transition.

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The story appearing in today’s Hill newspaper about Mark Penn is fundamentally inaccurate.

For more information, please visit the Burson-Marsteller blog.

The New York Times Room for Debate: Selling Health Care Reform to Voters

Mark Penn participated in The New York Times Room for Debate blog, weighing in on the question of what President Obama needs to do to sell health care reform to the American people.

Cross Those Party Lines
by MARK PENN
Published July 29, 2009

The biggest problem with health care is that no one agrees on the solution, so people say they support reform but in practice the more they know about any specific answer, the more they have concerns. That is what happened in the ‘90s and what is happening now and why it is so much easier to shoot down a plan than to sell one.

The underlying tension is that 47 million Americans may not have coverage but hundreds of millions do and they worry that the stress and strains of trying to pay for the last 15 percent will cause their coverage to deteriorate or even be rationed as has happened in other countries.

Read Mark’s full post at The New York Times Room for Debate blog

Mark Penn reviews the current health care debate on Fox Business News with Neil Cavuto. Watch the video at Fox Business News.

Mark Penn ranks #10 on PRWeek’s PR Power List of the 25 most powerful leaders in the industry in 2009.

Mark Penn [’08 rank - #10]
CEO, Burson-Marsteller

Last year wasn’t easy for Mark Penn. His candidate lost the presidential primary, and his actions were publicly cited for the loss of his firm’s client, Colombia. Yet Penn remains resilient. He is active on client work, including pitching key accounts, and he doesn’t shy away from defending the industry. When MSNBC personality Rachel Maddow took Penn and his firm to task for its client roster, including AIG, Penn defended the importance of its services, even to embattled companies, in an internal memo. And despite Hillary Clinton’s defeat, there’s no doubt that Penn will remain politically influential in the future.

Download the PR Power List 2009 (pdf format)

Why don’t you start by telling me some of the toughest moments you’ve been through when advising people in tough situations.

The truth is that in today’s world, there’s no success without failure. If you can’t tolerate a failure, it’s virtually impossible to have a successful life. The road to success is paved with roadblocks. Difficult moments, things that have gone wrong, attacks you didn’t expect. To be successful you have to be able to overcome and learn from failure. The moment you lose that perspective, you don’t climb back from that.

Maybe it’s easier said than done. How do you remind yourself at the toughest moment that it’s an inevitable part of success and that you just need to get through it? How do you keep a long-term view?

You’re right to say that it’s not easy—to really understand what you’re about, where you’re going. If you look at movies, almost all movies and popular culture are based on the idea of someone who’s different standing up. But in reality, being different and standing up and having a counter view is one of the hardest things to do in our society.

I try to remember that it’s not necessarily about what everybody else thinks at that moment. It’s really about, “Are you going to have the kind of strength and fortitude to carry through with what you believe in, even against the odds?” That’s what’s made me a tough competitor and a fighter that people relied upon through their difficult situations. When you find yourself in difficult situations, are you the shoemaker without shoes? You have to be able to find some of that personal fortitude.

Are you thinking of any movies in particular?

I grew up on movies like Mr. Smith Goes to Washington and Inherit the Wind that were always about standing up for what you believe regardless of the pressure. Today you can go to even kids’ movies and they are always about the bee, the penguin, or the cub who grows up by standing up.

My most successful strategies—like “soccer moms” in ‘96 for President Clinton or the Upstate Strategy for Hillary in 2000—were always opposed by just about everyone, and I can tell you that fighting for things outside the zone of conventional wisdom will always take a lot of flak, and a lot of energy to sustain.

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