In early November, Democrat pollster Mark Penn appeared on MSNBC’s Hardball and said that President Clinton reconnected with his speech after the Oklahoma City bombings, and Obama needs a similar situation to do the same. “President Clinton reconnected with Oklahoma. And the President right now he seems removed. And it wasn’t until that speech that he really clicked with the American people. Obama needs a similar kind of, yeah” said Penn.

Penn is the president of the polling firm Penn, Schoen and Berland Associates. He served as pollster to the president for Bill Clinton and became one of the Clinton's most prominent and influential advisers. Penn has worked on the election campaigns of Tony Blair, Ed Koch, Menachem Begin, and a number of Latin American political candidates. His consulting firm works for large multinational corporations, including Texaco, AT&T, Ford Motor Company, Merck & Co., Verizon, BP, and McDonald's. Penn has served as a key strategic adviser to Bill Gates and Microsoft since the mid-1990s.