Is Penn Mightier Than Axe?

I'm not a big believer in the idea of presidential candidates as creatures of their handlers. Their backgrounds and personalities are much more reliable indicators of how they perform than the guys whispering in their ears. But in an age of James Carville and Karl Rove, it helps to know a little something about the chief strategists in the candidates' corners.

As it happens, I've known Mark Penn of the Clinton campaign since college (that's 33 years) and David Axelrod of the Obama campaign since he was a Chicago Tribune reporter covering Gary Hart (24 years ago), which makes us all balding characters out of "That '70s Show." Their differences heighten the contrast between their two campaigns, one an establishment, by-the-numbers bid based in Washington, D.C., the other a more-visionary insurgency out of Chicago. Restoration versus Inspiration.

This season, Penn is probably best known for being rebuked by an Edwards aide on "Hardball" after The Des Moines Register debate for conspicuously slipping the word "cocaine" into the discussion of Obama, who had admitted in his autobiography that he used drugs in high school. After Benazir Bhutto was killed, Axelrod took some heat for trying to link the Iraq War (supported by Hillary) to deteriorating conditions in Pakistan that helped make the assassination possible.

Hillary's man Penn is a pollster by profession and the quintessential Beltway guy. Obama's "Axe," who has been with him since the early 1990s, is a hardheaded reformer who made his reputation as a media consultant with TV ads focused on character. Penn's weapon is his brain; Axelrod's is his gut.

Penn, whose Harvard nickname was "Pig-Penn," is one of those deeply shy guys who cover it with coldness. He has the IQ of a Bill Gates and the "EQ" (emotional intelligence) of an eggplant. His awkwardness makes him an especially strange choice to be CEO of Burson-Marsteller, one of the largest public-relations firms in the world, but the company (which represents Blackwater, predatory lenders and a few anti-union companies) obviously values him for his grasp of the "science" of selling tarnished products.

When Penn first joined the Clintons in 1996, he and Dick Morris (working out of the infamous Jefferson Hotel suite where Morris later sucked the toes of a prostitute) helped President Clinton get re-elected by identifying swing-vote "soccer moms." Four years later, Al Gore fired him as his pollster for simultaneously telling Gore that he was unlikable and that the country did not suffer from "Clinton Fatigue." The campaigns he has run have almost all been failures, including Joe Lieberman's for president. While Hillaryland includes a wide range of advisers, the Clintons depend on Penn to keep them in touch with what America is thinking.