Michael Henderson suggests

Email registration

Free weekly email update

Great products and special offers for Spectator readers

Click here for great value events

Click here for exclusive articles, offers, tasting notes and discussion

Penned up frustration

James Forsyth

Thursday, 6th March 2008

Ever since New Hampshire the press has had their obituaries for the Clinton campaign ready to run but Hillary keeps doing enough to prevent them from being published. Today, though, The Washington Post has a gripping look at the tensions inside the Clinton team which one suspects would have been run as their why Hillary failed story if the results had broken differently on Tuesday.

The villain of the piece is Mark Penn, Hillary’s chief strategist and the man most of the political class blame for Hillary’s problems: "

I think about all camps think it's Mark's fault," said a Clinton White House veteran close to the campaign. "I don't think there is a Mark camp."

The Post also reports that Penn’s colleagues on the campaign have made repeated efforts to have his role reduced or him fired.

Perhaps, the person with whom Penn clashes most is Harold Ickes. The two got into a very public argument about who was to blame for the campaign’s problems last week. But it seems that things are far worse in private:

At one point, he and Ickes, who have been battling each other within the Clinton orbit for a dozen years, lost their tempers during a conference call, according to two participants.
"[Expletive] you!" Ickes shouted.
"[Expletive] you!" Penn replied.
"[Expletive] you!" Ickes shouted again.

On one level this is all terribly inside baseball, I doubt that many voters in Pennsylvania are going to change their mind about who to support having ready this, but on another level it is a real problem for Hillary as it is preventing her from bathing in her success on Tuesday night. A real test of the will to win inside the campaign will be whether or not there is a follow up story in the press tomorrow. If there is, it will suggest that the vast egos inside the campaign are not prepared to suppress their vanity for the common good.