{"id":1745,"date":"2008-05-19T04:15:27","date_gmt":"2008-05-19T04:15:27","guid":{"rendered":"0"},"modified":"2008-05-19T04:16:54","modified_gmt":"2008-05-19T04:16:54","slug":"the_question_of","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/?p=1745","title":{"rendered":"The Question Of Hillary’s Competence"},"content":{"rendered":"

One reason I’m comfortable with supporting Obama is one that I imagine is going to be a stretch for many of you – because I believe he is likely to be the most competent<\/b> candidate out there today.<\/p>\n

I can say that because I really do view a modern Presidential campaign as a decent proxy for the strains and magnitude of actually being President. The difficult managerial task faced by a candidate is the coordination of lots of loosely-affiliated powerful individuals, delegating appropriately, and doing it all in the whirlwind of massive public attention.<\/p>\n

Hillary – whose campaign theme was “I’m ready<\/b>” clearly – wasn’t.Take a look at this TNR article<\/a> – a list of damning quotes from campaign insiders:<\/p>\n

“Hillary assembled a team thin on presidential campaign experience that confused discipline with insularity; they didn’t know what they didn’t know and were too arrogant to ask at a time early enough in the process when it could have made a difference, effectively shutting out even some long-time Hillaryland loyalists. Her innermost circle of [Patti Solis] Doyle, [Mark] Penn, [Mandy] Grunwald, [Neera] Tanden and [Howard] Wolfson formed a Board of Directors with no single Chairman or CEO; nobody was truly in charge, nobody held truly accountable.”<\/p>\n

\n“[Original campaign manager] Patti and [her deputy] Mike [Henry] sat up there in their offices and no one knew what they did all day. Patti’s a nice person who was put in a job way over head. She was out of her element. Mike Henry was hired because he was the flavor of day, the catch everyone wanted. I’m sure he was really great, but presidential politics require a unique skill set and knowledge.”<\/p>\n

\n“[Policy Director] Tanden and [Communications Director] Wolfson, the HQ’s most senior department heads, had no real presidential campaign experience, and no primary experience whatsoever. Notoriously bad managers, they filled key posts with newcomers loyal to them but unknown to and unfamiliar with the candidate, her style, her history, her preferences.”<\/p>\n

\n“Probably our second biggest mistake was much more operational: Making our chief strategist our one and only pollster. It is impossible to disagree and have a counter view on message when the person creating the message is also the person testing the message.”<\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Ouch. It reminds me of the Newsweek article<\/a> (can’t find it in their archive) on Kerry’s campaign…another reason I don’t for a moment regret not supporting him, in spite of the fact that he served in Vietnam.<\/p>\n

And one thing that makes me comfortable with Obama is the simple fact that he’s assembled a staff loyal enough not to air his dirty laundry in public. Good for him, and good for them.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The litany of managerial incompetence in the supposedly-deadly-competent Clinton campaign…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1745"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1745"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1745\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1745"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1745"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1745"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}