Monday, April 07, 2008

Penn Makes It Official, He's Still In Clinton's Camp

I don't know who bought the story from the Clinton campaign about Mark Penn's resignation last night, but if there are still any believers in that crap tonight's news should dispel that notion. In order to stem the damage from Penn's hypocritical relations with the Colombian government (since Clinton opposes free trade agreements between the U.S. and Colombia, at least publicly). Regardless of the resignation, it looked like it was only a title change and Mark Penn said as much tonight on the nightly conference call.

From The Huffington Post:

Peppered with questions from colleagues -- one mentioned her "pretty panicked client," another asked bluntly, "Ultimately did you think that it was the best thing for the company [to work for Clinton's campaign]?" -- Penn insisted that "the situation has played itself out."

But he confirmed that while his title with the campaign had changed -- and his work load would undoubtedly decrease -- he still would play a direct advisory role for Clinton.

"I think you've heard that I made the decision to step down as chief strategist of the Clinton campaign. Penn Schoen and Berland is going to continue to poll for it and I'll continue to play a role advising Senator Clinton and former President Clinton as well as the rest of the leadership of the campaign," he said.

Later, he added: "The title, the position of chief strategist tended to be one that drew a tremendous amount of attention. And, number two, yes, I will have more time. We will continue - Penn and Schoen will continue to do the polling and I will be advising, but the net of it will still be that I will have more time than I otherwise would have had so that definitely is going to be the case."


So Mr. Chief Strategist will now just be a chief strategist, if that makes any difference to anyone. He clearly wanted to make that known to all of the "important" people around him, namely those who can drive clients his way or that has anything to do with people getting rich from his PR and polling business. What a joke, Penn believes that this is over in the media and he can go back to business as usual, what an arrogant a**hole!