Microtransactions and Beyond
By MARK PENN Published November 17, 2009 Is President Barack Obama governing from the left or from the center? It’s a question no one quite seems to have a clear answer to. The post-ideological positioning that worked so well during the campaign is not proving as effective at holding the […]
By MARK PENN Published October 27, 2009 Republicans suggest that the aggressive move by the Obama White House to take on people and organizations that disagree with it and oppose its policies is an unprecedented abuse of government resources. This is, of course, nonsense. The Obama team is engaged in […]
By MARK PENN Published October 6, 2009 We are in the midst of the Obama administration’s most important week to date, as it faces three decisions that, taken together, could very well shape its legacy. Read Full Article
By MARK PENN Published September 25, 2009 President Barack Obama can’t be faulted for following the failed Rose Garden strategy of some of his predecessors. Instead, he is inventing a new approach — a prime-time strategy that has him out, about and on television virtually all the time. By and […]
By MARK PENN Published September 1, 2009 The Obama administration’s health care reform efforts are spinning out of control, and the White House is taking on water, seeing its ratings fall and its leadership questioned. For a president whose communication skills are so justifiably well-regarded, the biggest obstacle comes as […]
By MARK PENN Published July 29, 2009 It sounds so simple: Just tax the few to pay for social programs that benefit the many. Yet no political idea — embodied by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s call to tax the wealthy to cover health care for everyone else — has ever […]
By MARK PENN Published July 9, 2009 Unless some tough decisions are made soon, rising jobless figures will most likely hit what could be a public opinion and political tripwire: 10 percent unemployment. If and when the country crosses that line, it will be the No. 1 news story for […]
By MARK PENN Published June 18, 2009 Everyone knows the story of what went wrong in 1993 with health care reform: virtually everything. The plan was written by a White House task force, all the health care interests bitterly opposed it and spent heavily against it, the Republicans moved to […]
By MARK PENN Published June 3, 2009 To: President Barack Obama, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton While America has been preoccupied with the fight over the Guantanamo detainees and now the GM bankruptcy, and the United Kingdom has been distracted by the expense forms of its parliamentary members, two other […]
By MARK PENN Published May 20, 2009 To Hon. Speaker Nancy Pelosi: The accusations that the CIA did not properly disclose its waterboarding activities to you in 2002 are making you a lightning rod for criticism from the right and causing a split within Democratic ranks at a time when […]
Mark Penn is the President and Managing Partner of The Stagwell Group, a private equity fund focused on the marketing services industry.