But while Obama was indeed a rare talent, his skill alone wasn’t what cinched the nomination. Clinton blew a winnable race, despite having had almost every conceivable advantage. Oddly, the one thing she truly lacked was the very thing she chose to present as her primary qualification for the presidency: executive leadership skills. As Clinton often declared, in an obvious dig at Obama’s inexperience, she alone had the capacity to “do the job from Day One.” Yet whatever management skills Clinton may possess, she didn’t deploy in 2008…

In an effort to improve the culture, Clinton has made a point of keeping many of her quarrelsome old advisers at arm’s length and seeding her new operation with veterans of the “no-drama” Obama campaigns. But Clinton advisers never really go away; they just fall back and await their moment to return. This is probably why Clinton chose a new campaign manager, Robby Mook, who is not only experienced in Obama’s data-driven culture but has a reputation for gracefully handling outsized egos while keeping them at arm’s length. Knowing what he might encounter, Mook sent a memo in early April urging an attitude of positivity and cooperation. Lovely sentiment, but it may not be sufficient. Even Penn, Clinton’s chief strategist in the last campaign, made early gestures of goodwill, such as presenting his senior colleagues silver bowls etched with the words of Horace Mann: “Be ashamed to die until you have won some victory for humanity.” It didn’t keep the campaign from imploding. Huma Abedin, her close aide for years, has been installed just beneath Podesta as the campaign’s vice chair.

Perhaps the biggest management challenge of all is the one she’s married to. Bill Clinton can be any candidate’s most effective advocate, as Obama discovered at the 2012 Democratic convention in Charlotte. But in 2008, he was mostly a liability, offending many Democratic voters with comments that demeaned Obama’s victory in South Carolina and referred to his opposition to the Iraq War as “the biggest fairy tale I’ve ever seen.”