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Putsch in Hillaryland; The Clinton campaign's silent shake-up (inside Solis Doyle's firing)
© The New Republic 2008 ^ | Friday, January 25, 2008 | Michelle Cottle, senior editor

Posted on 02/20/2008 6:04:30 AM PST by Liz

The morning after is never pretty. In the wake of defeat in the Iowa caucus, it was a sad and sorry Team Hillary that assembled for a conference call with the candidate. Campaign manager Patti Solis Doyle, in transit back to Washington, was absent.

Top strategist Mark Penn was dazed and subdued, waiting for the candidate to come on the line. When she did, Hillary gave a brief greeting making clear that there would be no navel-gazing and that she was ready to look ahead, according to a participant in the call who was already on the ground in New Hampshire (desperately seeking guidance).

Adopting the same ready-for-business tone, message guru Mandy Grunwald tried to spur conversation by asking other top advisers if they wanted to share any thoughts. Nothing. After a pregnant pause, Hillary jumped back in to talk for a few minutes about what she saw as the next step. Again, she was met by silence that stretched out awkwardly until a displeased Hillary snipped, "This has been very helpful talking to myself," and hung up on the group.

Post-Iowa, even the most blindly devoted members of Team Hillary could see that a shake-up of the campaign was in order. The peculiarities of Iowa's caucus system aside, broad structural and tonal problems needed to be addressed. So, as a devastated top leadership struggled to make sense of what had happened, the candidate went to work: Plans were made to bring in new blood; rumors circulated about who among the senior staff would be booted after New Hampshire. But then--surprise!--Granite State voters smiled on the Clinton clan once more, delivering Hillary a political resurrection even more stunning than Bill's 1992 comeback.

The troops were elated. The generals were relieved. The candidate was glowing and crowing about her found voice. It was a grand and glorious triumph. Except... The campaign still needed shaking. The percolating trouble brought to the surface in Iowa could not be ignored. But how to accomplish this without damaging the campaign's miraculous new momentum? Especially when much of the discord, say multiple insiders, flowed from decision-makers at the very top of the pyramid.

For all Team Hillary's gifts, it is not known as a happy group. "I've never seen a campaign where everyone feels so bad about themselves," says one campaign staffer, echoing others. This may be somewhat unavoidable: Too much is on the line. Everyone is exhausted. The public scrutiny (damn those scrounging reporters!) is relentless. But compounding these generic stressors, say insiders, has been the fear-inducing, high-handed leadership of the coterie of überadvisers known as "the Five."

High atop Hillary's disciplined, leakproof operation, Solis Doyle, along with Penn, Grunwald, policy chief Neera Tanden, and communications director Howard Wolfson, have kept an iron grip on everything from ideas to access. Characterized by their colleagues--and even themselves--as a collection of brilliant but not especially likable political talents, the Five are seen by many insiders as contributing to the candidate's image problem.

Even those who profess fondness for individual members admit that none makes a compelling Face of the Campaign. So, when Team Hillary hit its Iowa speed bump, the thoughts of many immediately turned toward shattering the hold of the Five.

In any given situation, the first member of this inner circle to be targeted for abuse is Penn. The reasons are legion: his high profile; his right-of-center politics; his myopic focus on issues; his dismissal of the need for Hillary to get personal and address her likability problem; his unusual dual role as top strategist and pollster; and, of course, his famously rough manner.

It's little wonder that all those insiders who didn't care for Penn when the team was riding high were salivating at the idea of prying the campaign from his cold dead hands as things turned south in Iowa. But, despite political watchers crediting Hillary's comeback to her at last getting personal (a move Penn had fought against in favor of more Iron Lady messaging), New Hampshire bought Penn a reprieve. Instead, the adviser most damaged by Iowa may be the one closest to the candidate: Hillary's longtime scheduler and alter ego, Solis Doyle.

Among the most devout members of Hillaryland, Solis Doyle is cheered by supporters as an "unconventional" choice for campaign manager. Detractors are less kind, noting that even some of Hillary's most trusted advisers have long questioned Solis Doyle's readiness for the job. Clinton money man Terry McAuliffe is said to have expressed reservations early on, including in a conversation with the Clintons during the couple's January 2006 trip to the Dominican Republic, according to someone there with the group. (McAuliffe denies this.)

Similarly, several weeks before the campaign's official launch, a handful of the most senior Hillarylanders met with the senator to express eleventh-hour doubts about Solis Doyle, says someone Hillary spoke with after the meeting.

No one denies that Solis Doyle's authority stems less from her expertise or political savvy (though defenders insist she has an abundance of both) than from her bond with Hillary. The result, say critics, is a toxic blend of insecurity (about her abilities) and arrogance (about her proximity to the boss).

As they tell it, an overwhelmed Solis Doyle has become increasingly temperamental--playing favorites and abusing her relationship with Hillary to control information flow and enhance her own power. "It's become 'The Patti Show,'" snipes a former member of the Clinton White House who remains close to both Clintons.

Solis Doyle is said to allow unaddressed issues to pile up, failing to do things like return calls to surrogates in need of direction or contributors in need of stroking. "People are constantly complaining to the senator and other members of the campaign family that their calls aren't being returned," notes one observer who often hears from such people.

At the same time, over the course of her management career, Solis Doyle has developed a reputation for mucking around in the weeds, insisting upon signing off on even low-level decisions, such as where to hold a minor event and whether bagels or donuts should be served. (That's not a hypothetical.) She is brutal to staffers who try to circumvent her with a request, and she is not shy about reminding others of her position: When dispatched to Iowa headquarters in the final month, Solis Doyle demanded that in preparation for her arrival walls be erected around the section of the giant bullpen where she would be working.

As the leadership regrouped in the wake of Iowa, Hillary loyalists both inside and outside the campaign began contacting the candidate, offering opinions on What Next. "I've never seen such a sense of empowerment and excitement," recalls the Clinton White House veteran. "The Five disappeared, and it was like the fence that had been stopping ideas from flowing disappeared." Once that "overarching power structure was gone," the person adds, the rest of the team "went into overdrive."

So strong was the desire for change that the Granite State miracle, while obviously a godsend, left some staffers deflated as it became clear that the planned overhaul had been derailed. This is not to suggest that nothing has changed. Despite no heads having rolled, several advisers have been "layered on." Some are veteran Bill Clinton hands, such as former political director Doug Sosnik and ad man Roy Spence.

Others are longtime Hillarylanders who had been unofficially pinch-hitting for the campaign all along, including Melanne Verveer (now helping with faith outreach), Lissa Muscatine (speechwriting), Lisa Caputo (surrogate management), Jen Klein (a policy expert lending an occasional hand with speechwriting), and the formidable Evelyn Lieberman, who may be best remembered as the White House deputy chief of staff who booted a certain intern from the West Wing to the Pentagon. Lieberman is often praised as a "grown-up" with the brains and backbone to go toe to toe with any of the Five.

Among insiders keeping score, the new additions mean greater accountability for the Five. Spence is expected to affect the fiefdoms of Penn and Grunwald. The addition of communications mavens like Caputo and Kiki McLean (a veteran of the 1992 campaign who was drafted pre-Iowa to help with surrogates) is a recognition that Wolfson's shop needed reinforcements. Muscatine and Klein, meanwhile, can reinforce Neera Tanden's department, which handles speechwriting. Then there's Maggie Williams, who refers to herself simply as a "utility player." But no one on Team Hillary questions that she is far more than that.

Having served as chief of staff to both Hillary (in the White House) and Bill (at his foundation), Williams has the trust of both the former president and the aspiring one. Hillarylanders point to her as one of the candidate's closest confidantes, the person who "sees into Hillary's soul," "knows what makes her tick," and is arguably more of her "peer" than many other members of the inner circle.

When I asked Williams about her new role, she downplayed it, explaining that she will be doing a little of everything but nothing of note. And, above all, no matter what I may have heard, in no way has she been brought in to manage the team. Her friend Solis Doyle, she said, continues to make all the decisions befitting a campaign manager. As for her broader impact on the office, Williams demurs, "There are so many people over here that I don't think people have even noticed me."

Williams's history with the Clintons is a fraught one. Of the original Hillaryland crew, arguably no one bore the brunt of the scandals and political storms as fiercely. Twice, Williams became the object of intense public and legal scrutiny: first, when the Whitewater probe raised allegations that she had helped obstruct the investigation into Vince Foster's suicide by removing files from his office on the night he died; and, again, when the disputed details of her acceptance of a $50,000 political donation from Johnny Chung earned her an invitation to testify before Congress during the Democrats' 1996 fund-raising scandal. For many political watchers, Williams stood as the poster child for the Clintons' careless disregard of those close to them.

At the end of Bill Clinton's first term, a scarred and exhausted Williams, having racked up $350,000 in legal bills, resigned her White House post and fled to Paris for a couple of years with her new husband. Williams admirers see it as a testament to her devotion to Hillary that she has returned to the fray. It is also a testament to how desperately Team Hillary needed a jolt. And, by all accounts, Williams wasted no time in providing one--her self-deprecating protestations notwithstanding. The Wednesday after New Hampshire, Williams moved into the campaign's Ballston, Virginia, headquarters.

Having already reached out to many of the aforementioned Hillarylanders, she promptly began meeting with pre-existing members of every department to assess their problems, ideas, and needs. "It doesn't get any better than to have somebody of her stature come in and say, 'What do you need, and what can I do to help you get things done?'" says one Hillarylander now consulting with Williams. Word from inside HQ is that morale has already improved since Williams's arrival.

Whatever specific tasks they tackle, Team Hillary's latest additions are more broadly intended to open the lines of communication and loosen the grip of the Five. The veteran Hillarylanders in particular--Williams, Verveer, Muscatine, Lieberman--all have direct lines of communication with Hillary, making it that much harder for information to get roadblocked. Unsurprisingly, not everyone is thrilled with the new order. Williams's appearance on the scene, after all, was widely viewed as a vote of no-confidence in Solis Doyle.

And, although Williams stresses that she came aboard at Solis Doyle's behest, other insiders report that the wounded campaign manager took the arrival of her old boss rather badly. It provoked considerable comment when, for Williams's first day at HQ, Solis Doyle steered clear of the office, missing key strategy meetings that included the former president himself.

Even so, change proponents remain nervous that, with the sting of Iowa fading, the situation will regress as the Five reassert their primacy. "New Hampshire dulled the sword," sighs one staffer. And, now, with the Nevada wind in its sails, it seems all the more unlikely that an organization that fears revealing internal disunity like most folks fear bird flu will risk dramatic restructuring. But this is the corner into which the campaign has painted itself. Self-defined as a venture marked by stability and discipline, it can't very well start hurling bodies overboard without provoking a media feeding frenzy. Barring another Iowa-sized iceberg, staffers weary of the current direction may need to take solace in whatever minor course corrections can be made. Change may make for a snappy campaign slogan. But, as an organizational strategy, it poses something of an existential dilemma for Team Hillary.


TOPICS: Extended News; Politics/Elections
KEYWORDS: clintons; hillaryland; shamnesty; stophillary
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To: Liz

lamp....meet wall....


21 posted on 02/20/2008 6:53:58 AM PST by dba.adabas
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To: Liz

Surprise, Surprise...Hillary’s campaign is completely devoid of any likeable fuzzballs. They are all conniving vicious fingernails-on-blackboard sourpusses and the next level of backups as per Harold Iches and Sid Vicious don’t exactly help the ‘I’m OK, you’re OK’ TV time cause. BTW—where is arrogant ANN from MA (Barney’s sister, Susan Estrich, Carville or Begala? They are certainly just as irritating but at least different faces from the Grunwald Brigade.


22 posted on 02/20/2008 6:54:08 AM PST by rod1 (uestion)
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To: Nervous Tick
The myth of Hillary's inevitability carried over to campaign staff. Other than her top echelon of sycophants, I'll bet most of them simply hitched up with her in expectation of that good Administration or state Democratic party job down the road.

Hillary made a drastic mistake in this campaign, sticking with an incompetent group at the top for way too long. Even Ronald Reagan decided to fire his campaign manager after he lost Iowa to George H.W. Bush. In 2000, George W. Bush fired the operative that had been in charge in New Hampshire after losing to John McCain, and completely retooled his campaign theme and message. Hillary fired nobody after Iowa and made no changes in her theme or message. Not only did that leave the troops further down dispirited, it led to a false sense of security at the top that there was nothing really wrong with their strategy.

This is going to go down as a clear case of campaign mismanagement, among the worst in modern political history. Sure, Hillary was a flawed candidate, but not so badly flawed that she should have lost the nomination to a neophyte like Barack Obama.

23 posted on 02/20/2008 6:57:44 AM PST by Dems_R_Losers (Waiting for 2012 to vote for an actual Republican)
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To: stockpirate

Obama may be an empty suit, but there is enough air in there to keep him from putting Hillary in any power position.

For example, one post last evening suggested Obama would appoint her as his AG. Oh really... she would have him in jail in a NY minute and he knows it. Putting her in power as VP or AG evoluntarily would be like taking your own shovel and rug to Ft. Marcy Park.


24 posted on 02/20/2008 6:57:48 AM PST by rod1 (uestion)
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To: Senator Goldwater
Hillary places more premiumon loyalty than competence, because she can’t stand anyone in the room whom she perceives to be smarter or more agile. Like Mussolini.

More details here.

25 posted on 02/20/2008 7:00:18 AM PST by Liz (I spent $60 million and got one lousy delegate. Rudy Giuliani)
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To: Dems_R_Losers

>> This is going to go down as a clear case of campaign mismanagement, among the worst in modern political history.

It’s mean-spirited of me, but I’d like to see each and every one of these vile apparatchiks spends the rest of their miserable lives on a sidewalk, with a tin can and a cardboard sign.


26 posted on 02/20/2008 7:04:35 AM PST by Nervous Tick (Retire Ron Paul! Support Chris Peden (www.chrispeden.org))
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To: Liz

The only good thing that can come out of this ist that Patti Doyle, like many disgraced women, will grace the pages of Playboy sometime in the near future...


27 posted on 02/20/2008 7:05:10 AM PST by Clemenza (Ronald Reagan was a "Free Traitor", Like Me ;-))
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To: rod1
She resurrected the Old Guard---Bill Clinton, Terry McAuliffe, Maddie Albright, Ann Lewis (Barney's sis), Carville, Begala, Grunwald, Lanny Davis, Maggie Williams are all there. And don't forget to add to the usual Clinton suspects-----

Hill's brother, Hughie (golfing w/ Bill), would also be moving back into the White House.

After the Clintons left, one WH steward said when Hughie visited,
his sole occupation was ordering food from the WH kitchen.

28 posted on 02/20/2008 7:08:33 AM PST by Liz (I spent $60 million and got one lousy delegate. Rudy Giuliani)
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To: 668 - Neighbor of the Beast
If she goes down in this primary...

I see her as Ted's replacement as liberal lion in the Senate--for decades to come.

29 posted on 02/20/2008 7:12:32 AM PST by drubyfive
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To: 668 - Neighbor of the Beast
That's up to Obamasiah. He could appoint her

do you think her majesty would lower herself to accept anything less than VP from Obama? What would she accept?

30 posted on 02/20/2008 7:16:14 AM PST by shiva
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To: Clemenza
Wouldn't be surprised if ol' Hef does a series on the Clinton campaign crew---"I Took It All Off For the Clintons."


31 posted on 02/20/2008 7:19:08 AM PST by Liz (I spent $60 million and got one lousy delegate. Rudy Giuliani)
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To: Liz

With all the intrigue and back-biting just in running this campaign, imagine what a Hillary Administration and White House would look like! Scary.


32 posted on 02/20/2008 7:24:35 AM PST by ReleaseTheHounds ("You ask, 'What is our aim?' I can answer in one word: VICTORY - victory - at all costs...")
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To: Dems_R_Losers; Nervous Tick
This is going to go down as a clear case of campaign mismanagement, among the worst in modern political history.

Hillary's s trying to top Giuliani's disastrous campaign. Rudy was "saving" himself" for later, too---he campaigned in must-win Fla 61 days straight and finished a distant third. The more Giualini campaigned, the more voters were repulsed by him.

Although Hill can't top Giuliani in the delegate count---he spent $60 million and got only one delegate.

The controlled way Hillary speaks indicates a deep anger hiding inside. The way she greets voters with that deer in the headlights look must be off-putting in person.

Might think 1-2 of the 700 people she has working for her would have told her----then again, they were all operating on the belief that she was "inevitable."

33 posted on 02/20/2008 7:27:16 AM PST by Liz (I spent $60 million and got one lousy delegate. Rudy Giuliani)
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To: billorites; Liz
"Hillary snipped, "This has been very helpful talking to myself," and hung up on the group."

There probably were more than a couple of people who wanted to say: "If you would just get rid of that dumb assed Patti we could get things done around here."

They might have wanted to say it, but were to afraid to.

34 posted on 02/20/2008 7:30:12 AM PST by Enterprise ((Those who "betray us" also "Betray U.S." They're called DEMOCRATS!))
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To: angcat
"When can we open the wine!"

This isn't over yet.

"It's not over 'till we say it's over."

Remember from watching those old "Dracula" movies? Someone will have to drive a holly stake through her heart. Until that happens, don't count her completely out.

You can send the wine to me for safe keeping.

35 posted on 02/20/2008 7:46:54 AM PST by Designer
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To: shiva
do you think her majesty would lower herself to accept anything less than VP from Obama? What would she accept?

A Supreme Court appointment?

36 posted on 02/20/2008 8:16:09 AM PST by 668 - Neighbor of the Beast ( Peel back tabs for tagline. Do not remove this label. Obey.)
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To: Enterprise; billorites
There probably were more than a couple of people who wanted to say: "If you would just get rid of that dumb assed Patti we could get things done around here." They might have wanted to say it, but were to afraid to.

Yeah, Solis coulda called her contacts in Mexico and had federales in shoulder holsters and ammo clips patrolling Hillary's hdq.

37 posted on 02/20/2008 8:18:19 AM PST by Liz (I spent $60 million and got one lousy delegate. Rudy Giuliani)
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To: Liz

Once Hitlery loses, she is gone for good.

OTOH, I’d rather see Hitlery win for the general election then the Obomnation. McCain can beat either one but I’d like to see Hitlery creamed in a national election. Be gone Clinton’s!


38 posted on 02/20/2008 8:29:11 AM PST by nmh (Mike Huckabee the "religious" humanist that pushes socialism! (Clinton/Carter combo))
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To: Tennessee Nana; calcowgirl; indylindy; TommyDale; stephenjohnbanker; Condor51; cricket
.......over the course of her management career, Solis Doyle has developed a reputation for mucking around in the weeds, insisting upon signing off on even low-level decisions, such as where to hold a minor event and whether bagels or donuts should be served. (That's not a hypothetical.) She is brutal to staffers who try to circumvent her with a request, and she is not shy about reminding others of her position: When dispatched to Iowa headquarters in the final month, Solis Doyle demanded that in preparation for her arrival walls be erected around the section of the giant bullpen where she would be working..........
39 posted on 02/20/2008 8:29:51 AM PST by Liz (I spent $60 million and got one lousy delegate. Rudy Giuliani)
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To: Designer

Remember from watching those old “Dracula” movies? Someone will have to drive a holly stake through her heart. Until that happens, don’t count her completely out.
_________________________________________

Sorry cant use Holly

that holiday that falls on December 25 has been outlawed/banned/

And the Green people dont want you cutting down a forest

:)


40 posted on 02/20/2008 8:32:42 AM PST by Tennessee Nana
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