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Politics : The Next President 2008 -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: RMF who wrote (2365)	3/6/2008 2:00:48 PM
From: Hope Praytochange	Respond to of 3215

inside the rat hole: A more explosive example of the stress came a few days later. Phil Singer, the campaign's deputy communications director, emerged from a meeting on Feb. 11 and without explanation started angrily cursing the war room. "[Expletive] all of you," he shouted, according to a witness, then stormed out and did not return for several days. Penn was growing increasingly aggravated by what he saw as an untenable management structure, which another aide described as an "oligarchy at the top." Penn had no real people of his own on the inside and chafed whenever Solis Doyle or Ickes got involved in his sphere. 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. By now, Williams had decided it was untenable to stay unless she was really running the campaign. Clinton called Solis Doyle on Feb. 9 as she was losing three more states, and the decision was announced the next day when she lost a fourth. It was painful for both, because Solis Doyle had worked for Clinton most of her adult life. Henry, her deputy, turned in his resignation letter the next day and stayed just long enough to see out three more losses, in Virginia, Maryland and the District. Solis Doyle built a massive organization with more than 1,000 people on the payroll virtually overnight, and she was popular with a lot of colleagues. But there was a strong faction that resented her for shutting out experienced advisers from Clinton's Senate office, including chief of staff Tamera Luzzatto, health-care specialist Laurie Rubiner, communications adviser Lorraine Voles and longtime spokesman Philippe Reines. She also irritated colleagues by running late and frequently canceling appointments, and she drew fire for the campaign's financial problems. For all their conflicts, senior Clinton advisers agreed that the campaign hit rock bottom in Wisconsin. Only after that did the team, tattered and exhausted, begin to pick itself up. News of Clinton's loan to her campaign touched off a frenzy of Internet fundraising as supporters who assumed she had enough money rushed to contribute, the first success she has had in the sort of grass-roots fundraising Obama has mastered. In Austin on Feb. 21, Clinton had a solid debate performance, although her aides groaned as she accused Obama of offering "change you can Xerox." The line, advisers said, was offered during debate preparation by Bruce Reed, a Clinton White House official, but onstage it came across as forced and drew boos. In the end, ironically, it was male voters who saved Clinton. A confluence of factors in the final 10 days -- her advertising strategy, her renewed communications push, her shaken-up team -- restored her in one of her weakest demographics in Ohio and Texas. Her victories quieted talk both inside and outside the campaign that she should drop out. Yet renewal has come so late that advisers worry it may be too difficult to overtake Obama. "There was an arrogant attitude on the part of the campaign for many months," one lamented. "And now we're in a fight for our lives." Staff writer Matthew Mosk contributed to this report.

To: RMF who wrote (2365)	3/7/2008 2:00:45 PM
From: Hope Praytochange	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 3215

Obama Adviser Critical of Clinton Resigns By Peter Slevin and Perry Bacon Jr. Updated: 1:39 p.m. CHICAGO - Samantha Power, an outspoken foreign policy advisor to Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.), stepped down this morning after calling Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) a "monster" in an interview with a Scottish newspaper. She said Clinton was "stooping to anything" to win the Democratic nomination. In a statement released by the campaign as Obama prepared for a day of campaigning in Wyoming, Power called her remarks "inexcusable" and said she was resigning from her unpaid position "with deep regret." "She made a decision to resign and we accepted it," Obama spokesman Robert Gibbs said aboard the senator's charter. "Last Monday, I made inexcusable remarks that are at marked variance from my oft-stated admiration for Sen. Clinton and from the spirit, tenor and purpose of the Obama campaign," Power wrote. "And I extend my deepest apologies to Sen. Clinton, Sen. Obama and the remarkable team I have worked with over these long 14 months." In a conference call earlier today several Clinton supporters suggested that Power should step down. Later in the day, the Clinton campaign called attention to another interview Power gave while on book tour in the U.K. Power downplayed her candidate's campaign pledge to withdraw all troops from Iraq in 16 months, telling the BBC yesterday that his proposal was "a best-case scenario." "You can't make a commitment in March of 2008 about what circumstances are going to be like in January of 2009," she said. "He will, of course, not rely upon some plan that he's crafted as a presidential candidate or a U.S. Senator. He will rely upon a plan - an operational plan - that he pulls together in consultation with people who are on the ground to whom he doesn't have daily access now, as a result of not being the president. So to think - it would be the height of ideology to sort of say, 'Well, I said it, therefore I'm going to impose it on whatever reality greets me." Obama's Iraq plan calls for removing all U.S. combat troops from Iraq in 16 months if he is elected president, by withdrawing one to two brigades (around 3,000 soldiers) at a time. Clinton has also said she would also withdraw one or two brigades month, but has not set a firm timetable for all combat troops to be out of Iraq. Power's remarks were the latest controversy involving one of Obama's policy advisers. The candidate spent the days before the primaries in Ohio and Texas explaining a meeting between Austan Goolsbee, his top economic policy adviser, and Canadian officials, who said Goolsbee suggested Obama's rhetoric against some free trade agreements was simply political rhetoric. Goolsbee denied making the remark. Susan Rice, who served in the State Department in the Clinton administration but now advises Obama on foreign policy, spoke yesterday of an ad in which Clinton touts her ability to handle a crisis at 3 a.m. by saying "they're both not ready to have that 3 a.m. phone call." Posted at 11:47 AM ET on Mar 7, 2008