I think we're unlikely to see those. This is a rare peek behind the curtain (which is what makes it so fascinating) and one that could only come from a campaign beset by so much interpersonal turmoil. Contrast that with the profile that ran about a month ago about the steady, no-drama nature of Obama's campaign and you have the story of the race. The takeaway from this story is twofold for me: 1. Hillary was not even nearly the jerk she seemed during the primary and was rather poorly advised and poorly served by her team. However, she was considerably more ineffective as a manager (or leader) of staff than I would have imagined. 2. Barack, as evidenced by his campaign, is imminently prepared to "lead." Along with Plouffe and Axelrod, he just got done managing one of the most effective and efficient come-from-behind campaigns in our modern era. I found Mark Penn and Howard Wolfson both to be offensive personalities during the campaign (Garin too). As it turns out, Penn was way worse than he seemed and Wolfson and Garin were considerably better than they seemed. The moral of the story though (apart from the obvious, age-old moral of hubris) is that they should have ditched Penn a long, long time ago. He was worse than ineffective (in the Shrum mold); he was damaging in the extreme. I suspect that his long ties to Bill Clinton kept him around, but whoever made that decision for whatever reason it seems to me to be the story of this race. Well, that and how unexpectedly impressive Obama turned out to be.
I've just skimmed this thread and haven't had the chance to read the Atlantic Monthly article but I did notice that one thing they reveal is that Clinton wouldn't do anything to win unlike how many have portrayed her. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26146898 Clinton refused to cast Obama as un-American She rejected advice of top campaign strategist, magazine reports WASHINGTON - Hillary Rodham Clinton's top campaign strategist advised her to cast presidential rival Barack Obama as having questionable "roots to basic American values and culture" and use the theme to counter the image that his background is diverse and multicultural. "I cannot imagine America electing a president during a time of war who is not at his center fundamentally American in his thinking and in his values," Mark Penn wrote in a March 2007 memo to Clinton. Clinton did not take Penn's advice, revealed by a report in the September issue of The Atlantic magazine. The article says Clinton's campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination went from front-runner status to failure for a number of reasons, from badly managed money to blistering warfare between advisers. Clinton, the candidate who said she was ready to lead on Day One of her administration, did little to quell the infighting. Disputes over Obama Clinton grew angry during a conference call with her senior aides about how to recover from her loss in the Iowa caucuses. She found herself doing most of the post-mortem, to near-silence on the other end of the line. "This has been a very instructive call, talking to myself," Clinton snapped, and hung up, the magazine reported. Mostly, the disputes were over whether to go negative against Obama, a half-black, Harvard-trained lawyer with a gift for soaring rhetoric and big themes. Penn advised going negative. Obama's background — he grew up in Indonesia and Hawaii — was a "lack of American roots," Penn wrote. Also a weakness, he added, was the divisive rhetoric of Obama's controversial pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, who cursed America during a sermon. "Won't a single tape of Wright going off on America with Obama sitting there be a game-ender?" Penn wrote in a March 30 memo. Penn's memos also contained prescient advice. The memo from March 2007 talked about the importance of a key voting bloc he called "the invisible Americans" — women and lower- and middle-class voters. Those groups helped Clinton beat Obama in key states before she quit the race in June.
You should read the thread. I commended her for not following Penn's horrible advice and she comes off better in these memos than she did during the campaign, but the idea that she'd "do anything to win" isn't literal. In other words, it doesn't extend to her calling him a Manchurian (er, Iraqi) Candidate who is also a little black Sambo. Though I feel a lot better about her (and am so grateful to feel better about her as I did before the campaign), she did plenty that was worthy of criticism. I am willing, as a result both of this behind the scenes look and even more of her moves since conceding, to forgive her missteps but this is by no means some kind of total vindication. Maybe it was all Penn's fault, maybe it was Bill's, but refusing to use one egregious tactic doesn't excuse her from all the ones she did agree to employ.
