Bill to Hill: Turn Up the Heat

With presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton’s poll numbers sinking, campaign staffers are increasingly questioning the cautious approach taken by her top political aide, Mark Penn.

Sources say Penn has counseled moderation in the belief that an aggressive attack on Barack Obama would alienate voters and drive Hillary too far to the left to win the general election, Newsday reports.

But now Hillary’s husband Bill is advising her to take a far more aggressive approach now that Obama has climbed into a virtual dead heat in the polls in three early primary and caucus states.

As Newsmax reported Wednesday, Bill has been “yelling at Mark Penn a lot.”

One sign that Bill’s approach might be trumping Penn’s is the remark on Wednesday by a top Clinton adviser, who said Democrats should give more thought to Obama’s admission of illegal drug use in his younger days — although Hillary’s camp officially distanced itself from the comment.

One criticism of Penn’s approach is that it is too poll-driven, and that he has essentially tried to run Hillary as an incumbent.

“Mark wanted to run her, basically, for re-election, and we are seeing what happened,” a top Clinton staffer told Newsday.

Said another: “The heat’s on Mark … He’s got a lot of enemies.”