Clinton's campaign was torn by strife, magazine says

While Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton campaigned for president by offering herself as a sure-handed, competent successor to President Bush, her campaign team of highly paid advisers was riven by back-biting, poor management and conflicting strategies that contributed to her loss to Sen. Barack Obama, according to a magazine report released Monday.

Clinton also appeared prone to blowing up in anger privately, over negative news coverage and at her own aides for not pressing political arguments against Obama more aggressively and for other reasons, according to an article published Monday night on the Atlantic magazine Web site.

Among those contributing to the turmoil was former President Bill Clinton, who sided with Clinton's chief strategist, Mark Penn, in pressing for ”aggressive confrontation to tear Obama down,“ an assessment made by the magazine based on previously undisclosed memorandums and e-mail among the strategists.

The magazine described how at a dinner with editors of The Des Moines Register's editorial board before the Iowa caucuses, Clinton learned of the campaign's faltering efforts in the state.

”On the next morning's staff conference call, Clinton exploded, demanding to know why the campaign wasn't on the attack,“ the article said. Patti Solis Doyle, the campaign manager, ”was put on a plane to Iowa the next day to oversee the closing weeks.“

”Within hours of the call, the panicked staff produced a blistering attack on Obama for what it characterized as evidence of his overweening lust for power: He had written a kindergarten essay titled "I Want to Become President,' “ the article continued. ”The campaign was mocked for weeks.“

With some advisers, such as Harold Ickes, Howard Wolfson and Mandy Grunwald, pressing for restraint against Obama, the Clinton campaign often seemed to lurch from strategy to strategy, attacking Obama last November, and then shifting gears only weeks later and emphasizing Clinton's personal appeal.