Hillary’s Campaign and Transparency. Hah!

One of the great things about the emergence of social media is the trend toward transparency. The history of PR is murky and our ethics traditionally skewed to the highest bidder. That’s why the PRSA Code of Ethics was emphasized so much as an undergrad.

It makes me so angry to see articles like this. (It’s a few days old, but I’ve been busy with work and school.)

How is Mark Penn allowed to stay at Burson-Marsteller and remain the strategic mastermind behind Hillary’s campaign? This is wrong. Wrong. Wrong. He should either resign or take a temporary leave of absence or Hillary’s campaign needs to enter a contract with B-M.

If Hillary’s camp is employing Penn’s polling company, that should be it. Penn should not be dispensing any strategic advice and just provide numbers. This isn’t a gray area.

Why is Burson-Marsteller allowing him to stay? I suspect this is a main reason:

Penn said that he receives no compensation directly from the Clinton campaign and that his salary from Burson-Marsteller, which he declined to reveal, is contingent upon his management performance for the corporation overall, rather on than specific fees from the campaign.

There are so many people still enamored of Bill & Hill in this town who would love to have an inside Clintonista on their account. Penn probably provides quite a bit of cachet to B-M which brings up their bottom line. When profits are growing, agencies don’t have issues with blurring ethics, which they proudly promote at conferences and events.

I do love this quote from Penn:

I do communications, and it’s up to the clients what positions they take on things,” he said. “I’m not doing any lobbying. I’m not trying to win a particular piece of legislation or anything. I’m trying to help people sharpen their message.

Yeah, there’s no strategy in lobbying, and carefully manipulating the campaign of a Democratic front-runner requires no reporting. He’s toeing election laws here.  If he’s dispensing strategic campaign information from B-M’s office during office hours, using their e-mail system, talking on a company cell phone or any of the like, it needs to be filed. How much does Penn charge per hour? The nonprofit rate for a low-level AE in DC is at least $100 an hour. The personal advice of a CEO at a worldwide communications firm like Burson-Marsteller is probably worth somewhere between $700-1,000.

Hillary is saving a quite a bit if this paragraph is accurate.

Interviews with numerous associates of Penn’s indicated that he spends most of his time working on the Clinton candidacy, from his daily 7:30 a.m. strategy call with senior campaign aides until after 2 a.m., when he is often still sending out political e-mails. Some rivals and colleagues suspect he is polling for Clinton on a nightly basis, which Penn says is not true.

Nightly polling. If that’s true, it explains the $300,000 in polling from the first quarter. We all know how much the Clintons love their polls.

However shady Penn’s ethics are, this is priceless:

Penn’s theory of the 2008 race has always been that after two tumultuous terms under Bush, the electorate will want change — but not too much change. Clinton offers a perfect mix, Penn believes. She inherently represents change, as a woman, without being unfamiliar or untested, thanks to her many years in Washington.

Either Penn’s right and Hillary’s not that different than Bush, which makes the current state of Republican Party even more dismal, or someone drank way too much Clinton Kool-aid and needs to review his polling numbers of average voters in Middle America. Hillary’s the one candidate who could spur the Republican party to action regardless of who gets the GOP nomination. Want to see Republicans mobilize and use Web 2.0 to the fullest extent? Give Hillary the nomination. Republicans hate the Clintons almost as much as liberals hate Bush.