Who's Doing Mark Penn's Timesheets?

Open PR Week every week, and they're always there. Open necked shirt, just drunk a smoothie, and then a moan about "PR needing to take its deserved seat at the top table" because they're not there. 

Meanwhile in the real world, PR is deciding who will get the world's most powerful job. Mark Penn's got to be a busy bloke. We've all got meetings to go to, but being Chairman & CEO of Burson Marsteller can't see you at home for the opening titles of Eastenders too often. If you're also the man that's running Hillary Clinton's groaning White House campaign, then client status meetings are sure to be taking a back seat too. Strumpette gives an appraisal of how Penn's doing at his job-on-the-side, so I won't bother rehashing it and pretending its my own. My point is, the PR man is in charge.

Over a pint or driving a cab, your default one sentence verdict on the US election is of course,  that Obama is all mouth and no trousers - or "all hat and and no cattle" according to Hillary. (I assume Penn wrote that). Whether the Obama rhetoric is empty or rich, The Economist put together a convincing argument for allowing vapid PR people like ourselves to get the keys. Arguing that the Presidency is constitutionally weak, it said that  "the best presidents are like magnets below a piece of paper, invisibly aligning iron filings into a new pattern of their making. Anyone can get experts to produce policy papers. The trick is to forge consensus to get those policies enacted."

My job involves persuading people to consume the products I want them to, without them really knowing. The Economist says that the US President needs the same skill set. Those skills ought to be enough to get you a meeting with a senior brand manager.