Mark Penn is a Bum

I don't mind people who support Hillary Clinton. I may make some noise about it sometimes, but I can understand why they do. Senator Clinton is a very smart woman, who understands the minute details of public policy better than also anyone. She is a good speaker and can be very charming in person. She is experienced in both domestic and foreign policy, and has been through enough campaigns to know how to win.

But nominating Senator Clinton is a very dangerous message to send to our country.

Our politics has devolved. Instead of nuanced, eloquent, and substantive debate about very complicated matters of public policy, ethics, culture, and law, we reward politicians who can produce the quickest, funniest, and least threatening one-liner.

Instead of respecting and encouraging a dialogue between those with differing opinions, we belittle the other side's ideas, claiming them to be the product of evil, hatred, and greed.

Instead of getting public policy passed as legislation and enacting important programs and policies, we engage in a protracted game of one-upmanship where the goal is winning elections every year. It seems that many in our politics today hope to win a long-awaited Battle Royale which one day, in the distant future, when the other party is extinct, will produce the agenda we seek.

Instead of bringing new people into the process, and inspiring our citizens to break out of their cynicism and work for a politics of producing a better world, we play to the lowest-common-denominator, producing bland proposals that aim to slightly influence a small set of middle-aged, middle income white men in the suburbs of Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Florida.

This old politics has to come to an end.

But Hillary Clinton, unfortunately, can't do it.

In fact, her advisors are the problem. Take a look at what her top two advisors, Mark Penn and Mandy Grunwald, thought of the massive turnout of young people that Senator Obama brought to the Iowa Jefferson-Jackson Dinner last night.

An estimated 9,000 people showed up here at Veterans Memorial Auditorium Saturday night and the Obama campaign claimed that 3,000 of them were Obama supporters.

“The JJ is a place to deliver a message,” Tommy Vietor, Obama’s Iowa spokesman told me, “but it is also a place to show organizing muscle. It shows you can get people to show up at the same place at the same time.”

At least two of Hillary Clinton’s upper-echelon advisers, Mandy Grunwald and Mark Penn, were decidedly unimpressed .

“Our people look like caucus-goers,” Grunwald said, “and his people look like they are 18. Penn said they look like Facebook.”

Penn added, "Only a few of their people look like they could vote in any state."

Mark Penn would be a top advisor to a President Hillary Clinton. If this is the tone and opinion of one of our country's potential top White House staffers, I think we are safer without nominating Senator Clinton.

We must break out of the cycle of cynicism and the stranglehold that the chattering classes of pundits, consultants, and pollsters have on our political discourse. Mark Penn is a continuation of the past. We should not let him extend into the future by voting for his benefactor.