MarkPenn.com

By MARK PENN
Published September 25, 2009

President Barack Obama can’t be faulted for following the failed Rose Garden strategy of some of his predecessors. Instead, he is inventing a new approach — a prime-time strategy that has him out, about and on television virtually all the time.

By and large, this strategy has worked. But he’s on the edge of saturation exposure. An economist I know said recently if you have the marketplace cornered with a precious good, you get the highest price by restricting the supply, not by making it available to everyone.

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Mark Penn participated in a Morning Joe panel prior to President Obama’s statement on Iran’s concealment of a nuclear facility. Mark predicted that foreign policy matters will now take center stage, and it will be a critical time for the Obama administration’s policies in both Iran and Afghanistan.

Watch the video in Windows Media Player:
Part 1 | Part 2

By MARK PENN
Published September 1, 2009

The Obama administration’s health care reform efforts are spinning out of control, and the White House is taking on water, seeing its ratings fall and its leadership questioned. For a president whose communication skills are so justifiably well-regarded, the biggest obstacle comes as a surprise: the need for a clear and simple message of how his team’s version of health care reform will benefit ordinary Americans.

The administration must answer a series of questions before selling its plan to the public. What is the simple goal of health care reform? Control costs? Get a public option? Cover everyone? Cripple the insurance industry, which House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) describes as the villain of the health care system?

The Obama team must also consider what Americans really want from their health care system. From the very first sentence of the Declaration of Independence, America has been a country of no limits on life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Americans want universal care as they define it — the unlimited right to have all the health care they need and access to the latest technologies to live longer and extend the lives of their loved ones. Voters are looking for health care reform that offers tangible benefits.

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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

By MARK PENN
Published July 29, 2009

It sounds so simple: Just tax the few to pay for social programs that benefit the many.

Yet no political idea — embodied by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s call to tax the wealthy to cover health care for everyone else — has ever proved more contentious. The country was founded on the principle of unlimited and unbounded opportunity. Despite what poll questions often appear to say, class warfare language, outside the Democratic primary electorate, has always been politically counterproductive, because it divides Americans from one another and from their own aspirations and dreams.

And class warfare could be especially problematic now, considering that many of the Democratic Party’s newest supporters are among the highest-income categories — groups that had previously voted overwhelmingly Republican.

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By MARK PENN
Published May 20, 2009

To Hon. Speaker Nancy Pelosi:

The accusations that the CIA did not properly disclose its waterboarding activities to you in 2002 are making you a lightning rod for criticism from the right and causing a split within Democratic ranks at a time when party unity is essential for the big fights ahead on health care and energy reform.

President Barack Obama has planted his feet firmly in the center on the war against terror and upped the troop levels in Afghanistan, allowed modified military trials and quashed the torture abuse photos that would have captured headlines and sympathy. Given that, he is making you appear out of step with his strategy and goals.

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Mark Penn participates in panel entitled “Media Power Vs. Political Power: The 2008 Election Re-defining the Relationship” alongside senior correspondents from the major news outlets, as part of Time Warner’s Politics 2008 Summit: The Media Conference for the Election of the President. To view the video, please visit the Digital Hollywood Time Warner Summit Conference page.

By MARK PENN
Published September 29, 2008

The financial crisis has redefined the presidential race, bringing into stark relief the candidate who can deal with the complexities of the global markets and return the country to prosperity over the next four years.

The race is no longer about change, experience, Iraq, tax cuts or universal health care. The job posting has been fundamentally altered.

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By MARK PENN
Published September 24, 2008

The two prep teams for the presidential debates are moving into high gear, readying their candidates for the ring, knowing the stakes are probably the highest since the Kennedy-Nixon face-offs played a decisive role in the 1960 election.

The winner of Friday’s presidential debate could be the candidate who beats expectations and thereby causes another jump ball in this volatile election.

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By MARK PENN
Published August 25, 2008

For eight years, President Bill Clinton prepared America for the 21st century, restoring optimism and activism to the presidency, redefining America’s role in the world, funneling more money to the poor and underserved while balancing the budget and creating the foundation for the one of the greatest economic expansions since the Industrial Age.

And yet as Barack Obama formally accepts the Democratic nomination, having defeated Hillary Rodham Clinton, people regularly ask whether is Clintonism dead.

No, not by a long shot.

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