JUST POSTED ON TAP ONLINE: PENN, INC. Prompted by the Prospect's debate over Hillary Clinton (a debate that is now available to non-subscribers, by the way), Mark Schmitt says that he's got no beef with the senator -- his problem is with her pollster and advisor, the very influential (and multiply employed) Mark Penn:
I will admit to being a little obsessed with Penn, partly because I think his focus on these dubious sub-segments of affluent swing voters has hugely limited the possibilities for inspiring, ambitious, purposeful politics in the last decade. (And its corollary assumption that all lower-income voters are unmovable -- either locked to one party or to non-voting -- was proven wrong by Karl Rove in 2004 and Rahm Emanuel in 2006.) ...
But I digress. The bottom line is I kind of keep track of Penn. And like every good Washingtonian with a few million dollars in mortgages, he seems to hold at least three jobs at once: He's Senator Clinton's pollster and political advisor. He runs his own corporate polling firm, Penn, Schoen and Berland. And, finally, he is the "Worldwide President and CEO" of Burson-Marsteller, the fifth largest public relations firm in the world. That's a big title, and it seems like it would be a big job. Prowl around the Burson-Marsteller web site, and you'll see that it's a company that does lots of things.
Read to find out more.
--The Editors
