Based on their performance, I would automatically discount the judgment of anyone hiring either of them.

1. Hillary Clinton is a bad and badly flawed candidate.
2. Barack Obama's marketing of himself as a vessel for people to project their hopes and dreams, while he has studiously avoided specifics has largely been successful.
3. Hillary Clinton mounted a poor campaign driven by arrogance and a sense of entitlement until it was too late. Just look at the final week to see this in all its glory.
4. Clinton fatigue finally took its toll, even on Democrats.
5. Hillary Clinton's elevation of sycophancy as a principle attribute for her staff finally caught up with her. She paid the price for making it difficult, if not impossible, to get frank advice.

Note, Obama's pile of money did not make the list. Mark Penn is to an extent I am unable to completely discern responsible for item 3.

Of course, why should Penn care? He and his firm made an insane amount of money in the process of losing.

Or why they spent their money so foolishly.

Technocrats are predisposed to spend their money on consultants.

I heard there was some kind of war recently. Any truth to that? Could we ask Mark Penn?

Indeed. No doubt, Hillary's careful positioning on the war in 2003 in preparation for 2008 backfired. OTOH, she ran the worst possible campaign based on that original positioning, neither consistently explaining why she voted as she did, nor consistently explaining what she would, in the considered judgment gained in four decades of super-duper experience, do now.