On the April 7 edition of MSNBC Live, host and NBC News chief foreign affairs correspondent Andrea Mitchell plugged former Clinton White House press secretary Dee Dee Myers' book Why Women Should Rule the World (Harper, February 2008) during a discussion with Myers about the recent resignation of Mark Penn as Sen. Hillary Clinton's chief campaign strategist. After mentioning the title of the book, Mitchell asserted, referring to Clinton's campaign: “I don't know -- this campaign, right now, is not the greatest example of why women should rule the world.”

From the April 7 edition of MSNBC Live:

MITCHELL: Mark Penn, Hillary Clinton's top strategist, has resigned because of conflicts of interest. He was forced out, according to campaign insiders, after The Wall Street Journal first reported that he was a paid lobbyist for the government of Colombia and its free-trade agreement, something that Senator Clinton opposes. Clinton White House spokeswoman Dee Dee Myers is a Hillary Clinton supporter.

MYERS: I'm neutral, technically neutral in the race, but certainly have been very sympathetic to the Clinton campaign in a lot of ways.

MITCHELL: But how does this happen? Let's take it apart. First of all, the very fact that he was working as the CEO of Burson-Marsteller, this worldwide lobbying firm, at the same time as he was running her campaign.

MYERS: Right.

MITCHELL: Those two things seem completely incompatible.

MYERS: Right, and I think this proves that in fact, they were incompatible. Burson-Marsteller is a gigantic firm, as you pointed out. They handle a wide variety of cases, and there's no doubt that somewhere in the Burson-Marsteller portfolio would be an issue that would raise a conflict with Senator Clinton. Now, you could say that he could recuse himself -- Mark Penn could have recused himself from some of those decisions but in this case, he actually met with the Colombian ambassador to talk about an issue which Senator Clinton opposed, which was passing a Colombian free trade agreement. So, he was taking a meeting that was at odds with the stated views of the candidate he was supporting, not for city council someplace, this is the president of the United States. So, it really boggles the imagination to understand how he could have gone into that meeting knowing what he knows.

MITCHELL: And, the very fact that this is an issue she had made center -- a central issue in the Ohio primary -- it's important in Pennsylvania, important in Indiana, important in North Carolina, these three huge primaries coming up. The fact that she had attacked the Obama campaign for their adviser, Austan Goolsbee, an academic, not a paid, $300,000 --

MYERS: The difference, not to split hairs, but Austan Goolsbee met with Canadian officials and said don't pay -- basically the message that they took away was don't pay attention to what Senator Obama says; if he's elected, NAFTA won't change. So that was a big problem. Nonetheless, we know how this process works. Mark Penn knows how this process works. It's both -- it both looks bad on its face, is bad on its face for him to meet with the Colombian ambassador. It looks particularly bad given what just happened in the Obama campaign. It's not exactly apples and apples, but it's close enough that he obviously should have known better.

MITCHELL: Now, now, take me inside. You're also the author of the book Why Women Should Rule the World.

MYERS: Yes.

MITCHELL: I don't know -- this campaign, right now, is not the greatest example of why women should rule the world.

MYERS: Right.

MITCHELL: Take us inside a campaign like this. Why is Mark Penn such a lightning rod? Why didn't he get along -- why were there screaming matches --

MYERS: Right.

MITCHELL: -- between him and Howard [sic: Harold] Ickes? You know all these players.

MYERS: Well, the reason that he's in the position that he's in is that he's very close -- he has close relationships with both President Clinton -- former President Clinton -- and Senator Clinton. He worked for President Clinton in 1996 and was very intimately involved in not only the re-election campaign, but stayed there throughout the whole impeachment process and was a key adviser to the president at a very difficult time. Both Hillary and Bill Clinton are notoriously loyal. And so I think they felt comfortable with him. He's a brilliant -- according to Hillary Clinton's memoir, but sometimes rough and tumble adviser. But she liked him and felt comfortable with him.

MITCHELL: And he helped her in the 2000 race --

MYERS: Exactly.

MITCHELL: -- and in her re-election.

MYERS: Exactly. So he's been there for both of her Senate races. But he is a notoriously difficult to get along with guy. He's -- people say he's --

MITCHELL: What does that mean inside a campaign, that someone's difficult? You're in a meeting, you're sitting with [Clinton adviser] Mandy Grunwald, let's say, and discussing a script for a commercial.

MYERS: Right. Well, the way -- and I haven't been in any meetings with Mark Penn, but the way difficult people sometimes assert themselves -- and stories we've all heard about Mark Penn is that he doesn't listen to anybody else. Not only is he dismissive of their advice, but he's dismissive of them personally. And I think he rubs people the wrong way. And not only that, OK, so you take a difficult person. Well, the world is full of difficult personalities; if that was his only sin he would be still the chief strategist of the campaign. He was the driving force behind the strategic decision to focus only on the big states up to Super Tuesday and not to have campaign organizations in some of the smaller states, in the caucus states, and we all know that between Super Tuesday and the Ohio and Texas primaries, Senator Obama ran up almost the entire margin of delegates that he now enjoys, this almost insurmountable lead among pledged delegates.

MITCHELL: So, he's the genius behind ignore the caucus states --

MYERS: Right.

MITCHELL: -- don't worry about those delegates.

MYERS: About those little states, right. You can get the delegates you need from the big states. The other thing that he is blamed for, and I think if you talk to people inside the campaign, rightly so to a large degree, is that he didn't think it was necessary to soften Senator Clinton's image, to humanize her, to look for ways to show her more emotional side. He thought that a campaign on competence and on experience alone would be enough, and he believed that his polling data showed that. One of the other mistakes they made is he's not only chief strategist, he's the chief pollster.

MITCHELL: There's a conflict.

MYERS: There's a conflict there. It's not only a conflict, it's just not in your interest as the candidate to allow one person to process that data. Because you can find a lot of stuff in polling that might support your conclusions, but what you need is somebody there to argue a different perspective.

MITCHELL: But Dee Dee, isn't there a legitimate argument in this, that if someone misses that and has a structure that is so built on conflicts, misses the whole point that this is a change election, not an experience election, one questions the candidate ultimately has to take responsibility for that?

MYERS: No question about that. I think that, look, loyalty is important, but loyalty at the expense of competence or the ability to change course becomes, I think, an impediment of good leadership and good management.

MITCHELL: His bad advice did not come cheaply.

MYERS: Well, you know, I think that's been overblown. Because a lot of the money went through his polling firm but was then doled out to vendors for various ad buys and things like that. I think that they capped how much they were going to make it. I think it's $250,000. You'll have to check me on that. So he's -- so those figures that say he made $10 million are incorrect. Nonetheless, he's made plenty of money. It's not about money. It's about winning the presidency. And I think Senator Clinton has to take the responsibility now. She's left with the aftermath. Look, there's still a question about, what does it mean he's been sort of demoted? Does that mean --

MITCHELL: He's still in there.

MYERS: He's still in there. His firm, Penn Schoen and Berland, is still the principal polling firm, although Geoff Garin and other Democratic pollsters now playing an important role and I think it's had a very calming effect in some ways inside the campaign, as has the presence of Maggie Williams, who we all know to be, you know, just a tremendous person. So, a lot of questions still unanswered. I mean, it's another thing -- you know, this -- a clean break might have been -- had a better result with this. There's still going to be questions about, OK, what's Penn's role going forward?

MITCHELL: Dee Dee Myers, author of Why Women Should Rule the World, the New York Times bestseller. Thanks for joining us.

MYERS: Thanks, Andrea, always a pleasure.