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By MARK PENN Published June 1, 2010

President Obama’s political career and clout have never been in a more perilous state than this week as he faces mounting crises, plummeting poll numbers, and solutions that remain just out of reach.

The list of problems has become almost endless — the BP spill is becoming Obama’s hostage crisis, and will likely hit 100 days without a solution; unemployment remains stuck at nearly 10 percent; either from desperation or isolation, Israel has created a new Mideast challenge; Iran has enough nuclear fuel for two nuclear bombs; north Korea is threatening south Korea; the deficit is exploding and the healthcare bill remains unpopular. And these are just the top level problems; as a result, administration press briefings sound somewhat like the old theme song from “Car 54, Where Are You?” — a show from my childhood. And Voters across the country are wondering if they underestimated the value of experience and crisis management as important attributes for their president.

Despite this litany of growing problems, the president spent just 3 hours in New Orleans before heading off to a weekend vacation, attempting to move the traditional Arlington Cemetery Memorial Day ceremonies to Chicago, where they were rained out, filling up the Drudge report. Equally surprising was the White House decision to wait three months to answer questions on the Sestek job offer, and then do so on the Friday before Memorial Day weekend.

So what’s a president to do facing these problems and midterms around the corner?

First, almost all of these problems are about substance, not style, branding or even communications. They can’t be addressed with press conferences and panels. The public is looking for direct and immediate action, thought out and taken by the an administration that acted boldly when it took office to prevent a possible depression.

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Rub-A-Dub-Snub! Are Leaders Scrubbing Up?

By MARK PENN, US debates expert
Published April 23, 2010

If the first election debate spawned a new political catchphrase – “I agree with Nick” – the second debate in Bristol saw the line abandoned.

After watching Nick Clegg’s popularity soar in the last week, both David Cameron and Gordon Brown sought to use the foreign affairs debate to show why they don’t agree with the Lib Dem leader, on a range of policies from the Euro and immigration to Trident and nuclear power.

They had to restrategise, and they did.

Mr Brown and Mr Cameron had to wake up to the changed reality of an electorate tired with the old and fascinated by the possibility of new.

Mr Cameron had to show that only he represents real change and Mr Brown had to show that Lib Dems are a risk to future prosperity.

They both did better, but Mr Clegg still stands as a real force in the election and as someone who can mobilise young people.

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By MARK PENN Published April 20, 2010

The prediction that passage of health care followed by an impressive agenda of global nuclear and Wall Street regulatory reform would lift up the administration by showing aggressive leadership seems to be one of those strategies that looks good on paper but so far has not worked in practice.

President Obama’s ratings remain below 50 percent in the Gallup tracking and in most other polls. The prophesied bump from health care never materialized, and the polls show most Americans still oppose the health care plan, believing it will increase, not decrease, the cost of their care.

The administration’s calculus that unpopular legislative success can translate into big November wins simply doesn’t add up. Unless the administration finds a new path and a new strategy, they’re facing potential electoral retribution on a scale unseen since 1994, when sweeping GOP victories seriously constricted President Clinton’s legislative options.

To hold on to his majority, the President needs to make course corrections — It’s time for a new kind of bold from President Obama.

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UK Leaders’ Debate: Lessons For Next Time

By MARK PENN, US debates expert
Published April 16, 2010

The first UK election debate brought with it a real sense of interest and expectation.

Would there be a knock-out blow? Would any of the candidates slip up? How would they cope with the intense scrutiny and interrogation under the hot TV studio lights for 90 minutes?

At the end, many viewers may feel their expectations weren’t quite met.

There was no “you’re no Jack Kennedy” moment and none of the candidates lost their way.

In fact the only one who seemed really flustered by the experience was ITV’s host Alastair Stewart.

Yet there is still much to learn from the performances of the leaders in the first debate.

And it may well shift the political sands – it will take a few days to see how the real polls shift, but Labour may find itself with deeper problems, pecked upon from both the left and the right.

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The Washington Post asked Mark Penn and other political experts whether the Republican Party would win in November with a negative strategy.

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

The Republicans have made a living out of running tough, negative campaigns and presenting “no” as a strategy. It’s not really a strategy but a substitute for good ideas. Perhaps the best example of that was when Newt Gingrich shut down the government to stop Washington spending. He thought he would be welcomed as a hero. It backfired big-time — the public wanted progress, not partisanship.

They did a lot better with the Contract for America. That played to their strengths of lower deficits, smaller government and lower taxes — themes that if backed by good policies have typically been their best cards.

While there is a lot of dissatisfaction with the health-care bill, talk of repeal rather than select fixes misses the mark and again puts Republicans down as the party of “no,” not of constructive bipartisanship and action.

And the voters who will decide the election — the vital center — are the ones most likely to want to see results over insults.

Today’s Republican leaders in Congress still have only a 36 percent approval rating in CNN polling, even if they are creeping up in the generic horse race. The swing electorate today likes neither the Democrats nor the Republicans in Congress, and that can make for some extreme volatility between now and November. It is the party that wins them over with ideas that is most likely to go home with their votes.

Many years ago I worked on a successful campaign based simply of the slogan of “Ya Basta” — enough. Today, Americans have had enough of enough. They want something more.

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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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By MARK PENN
Published November 17, 2009

Is President Barack Obama governing from the left or from the center? It’s a question no one quite seems to have a clear answer to. The post-ideological positioning that worked so well during the campaign is not proving as effective at holding the electoral coalition together given the mounting pressures of governing.

During the campaign, Obama nodded to the left on the Iraq war and civil liberties, but he also sent signals to the center that he would operate in a generally bipartisan manner, pursue the Afghanistan war vigorously and not raise taxes on 95 percent of all Americans. Centrist voters are looking to see that these promises are kept.

While the White House communications have been stellar overall, the echo chamber out there has left some uncertainty about important issues in the voters’ minds. Is the administration for or against waging the Afghanistan war on an all-out basis, including taking down the Taliban? Are jobs or regulating Wall Street its top priority? Should the insurance drug companies be reined in or an accommodation reached?

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By MARK PENN
Published October 27, 2009

Republicans suggest that the aggressive move by the Obama White House to take on people and organizations that disagree with it and oppose its policies is an unprecedented abuse of government resources.

This is, of course, nonsense.

The Obama team is engaged in a series of tough legislative and press battles and is stepping up its game, not stepping over the line. And the actions taken by the White House are mild and pale compared with those of the Gingrich and Bush years.

Let’s look at the Republican record on this.

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By MARK PENN
Published October 6, 2009

We are in the midst of the Obama administration’s most important week to date, as it faces three decisions that, taken together, could very well shape its legacy.

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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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