Poison Penn

Playing 'the American card' in Campaign '08 It seems like only yesterday that some were engaged in a silly argument over whether it was John McCain or Barack Obama who played the race card in this election. It's silly because the whole race card thing is so 20th century. Anyone who has been paying attention knows that, in this election, a more potent weapon is “the American card.” That's when political operatives working to defeat a particular candidate (Barack Obama) try to paint their target as a less-than-full-blooded American. That seems to be the sort of mud that Hillary Clinton's former chief strategist Mark Penn was prepared to throw at Obama during what was already a bruising contest for the Democratic presidential nomination. According to a March 2007 memo to Clinton that has only recently surfaced, Penn urged that... [read full story]