Penn Advised Hillary to Cast Obama UnAmerican

Update: 8-11. Story is out. 

Update: More at CNN, following on Politico's story. 

No surprise here. 

Looks like there were a lot of unhappy campers on Hillary's team. Politico writes about a forthcoming story from the Atlantic.

Mark Penn, the top campaign strategist for Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.), advised her to portray Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) as having a “limited” connection “to basic American values and culture,” according to a forthcoming article in The Atlantic magazine.

The magazine reports Penn suggested getting much rougher with Obama in a memo on March 30, after her crucial wins in Texas and Ohio: “Does anyone believe that it is possible to win the nomination without, over these next two months, raising all these issues on him? … Won’t a single tape of [the Reverend Jeremiah] Wright going off on America with Obama sitting there be a game ender?”

Atlantic Senior editor Joshua Green writes that major decisions during her campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination would be put off for weeks until suddenly Clinton “would erupt, driving her staff to panic and misfire.”

Desperation.

Penn, the presidential campaign’s chief strategist, wrote in a memo to Clinton excerpted in the article: “I cannot imagine American electing a president during a time of war who is not at his center fundamentally American in his thinking and in his values.”

Drama.

Green reports that on Feb. 11, the day that Clinton finally replaced campaign manager Patti Solis Doyle with Maggie Williams, Wolfson aide Phil Singer cursed out first Wolfson, then Policy Director and Solis Doyle ally Neera Tanden, yelling: “[Expletive] you and the whole [expletive] cabal” before climbing on a chair, berating the entire staff and leaving.

Solis Doyle is now on the Obama team.

Hillary's Solis Doyle Busy on Obama Campaign

Fired as Hillary's campaign manager, the Obama camp snapped up Patti Solis Doyle after the primaries.
WaPo has a story on her today, which gives a lot of insight on the Hillary's failed campaign.
Here's what she'll be doing:

Her job with Obama is a significant one. Reporting directly to campaign manager Plouffe, she is hiring more than 30 people to support the vice presidential nominee and his or her family. "Unless someone has run for president before, this is an experience that is completely indescribable," she says. "The idea of going from zero to 100 overnight -- it is incumbent upon me to staff that person with people who have done this before. And I have done it before." And that staff's foremost loyalty is to the nominee, not his running mate. The fierce loyalty that Solis Doyle once enforced for Hillary Clinton she will now insist upon for Barack Obama.

"The day she conceded I cried," Solis Doyle says, "but I heard her. She said we are moving on, and we cannot waste time with the what-ifs." She says restoring her reputation was not paramount in her decision, but notes, "Certainly, no one would want their final act in anything to be what happened to me."

Here's more.

The Obama campaign was stunned by the swift and loud outcry from the Clinton camp when Solis Doyle's appointment was announced last month. Loyalists read the hiring as a pointed message from Obama that he had no intention of considering Clinton as his running mate.

"There was no message -- absolutely not," Obama senior strategist David Axelrod says. He said he never asked Solis Doyle, whom he's known for 20 years, where she stood with Clinton, and he says he was not aware of issues associated with her management style.

"Honestly, we were not privy to the history of the campaign's relationships," he says.

The Obama operation hired Solis Doyle, he explains, because it needed someone who had been through the process. "She is my friend -- I make no bones about it," he says. "But we're not a [charitable organization]. We're trying to win a election here. She brought a useful skill set."

Asked whether he had given consideration to Solis Doyle's reputation as a controversial manager, Obama campaign manager David Plouffe says: "There's a culture to an organization that influences people's behavior, and our culture has been collegial and respectful. . . . I heard theirs was not as collegial. . . . In the past few weeks, she has been a complete team player."

Clinton's Solis Doyle on the Obama Team

Patti Solis Doyle will be chief of staff to whomever the vice president will be.

NYT: The Obama campaign is about to make its first big hire out of the campaign of Hillary Rodham Clinton. Patti Solis Doyle, who was Hillary Rodham Clinton’s campaign manager until she was ousted in a staff shake up in February, will join Mr. Obama’s campaign as the chief of staff to the vice presidential candidate – whoever he (or she) will be, campaign officials said.
Ms. Doyle will take the position before Mr. Obama announces his choice for a running-mate – he has not said when that will be. Mrs. Clinton and Ms. Doyle have a long friendship, and Ms. Doyle has long been one of her closest aides, until she was forced out. Could that mean – tea-leaf reading time – that Mr. Obama is really considering Mrs. Clinton for the No. 2 position, and wants to have an ally of her in place to ease the way? Perhaps.
Or perhaps not. More likely, the Obama campaign was looking for a high-profile spot to put Ms. Doyle, given her previous position, and most of the major roles in Mr. Obama’s campaign are filled.