Hey! Name Recognition!

Let me recommend Neil Sinhababu's critique of this Mark Penn memo about how Hillary Clinton is a super-strong candidate. Obviously, Clinton pays Penn money to produce this kind of analysis, so it's not surprising that it isn't especially sound. Still, it's almost insultingly unsound. Virtually everything Penn says about Clinton vis-a-vis other Democrats is clearly attributable to name recognition, a concept Penn would evidently like you to believe he's unfamiliar with. I don't really understand how releasing this kind of thing is supposed to actually help Clinton's chances -- it's just sort of making me mildly annoyed.

This article available online at:

http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2007/01/hey-name-recognition/41242/