Tips for Gordon

Hillary’s guru has some tips for Gordon

Matthew d'Ancona

22 September 2007

An interview with Mark Penn, Hillary Clinton’s chief strategist

The danger in all this hectic disaggregation, of course, lies in fundamentalist microtrend groups: movements such as militant Islam enabled to flourish in an age of choice which seek to deny choice to everyone else. ‘We found out that if there was going to be a reformation of Islam it would be more likely to come from the US because they have in many ways found out how to co-exist within the society,’ says Penn. ‘The question is within Islam — whether or not they themselves can have microtrends that result in an outcome that goes towards tolerance.’

As CEO of Burson Marsteller and President of Penn, Schoen & Berland Associates, he has worked with a huge array of clients (so many, indeed, that his critics allege potential conflicts of interest in his political work — charges he vehemently denies). But he is, first and foremost, a razor-sharp political strategist, the man who famously identified the category of ‘Soccer Moms’ when working for Bill Clinton in 1996: those busy suburban women devoted both to their jobs and their children, with serious anxieties about specific policies, who (unlike their husbands) had yet to make up their minds.

Penn’s methods mark a sharp reaction against the recent obsession with ‘emotional intelligence’ or ‘EQ’ in political practice. He is a pitiless believer in the power of quantitative analysis — being what he himself would call a ‘Numbers Junkie’ — and he is scathing about those who rely upon ‘the naked eye and an eloquent tongue’, adding that ‘non-quantitative, conventional wisdom is usually not wisdom at all’.

He was brought into Bill Clinton’s team by the self-aggrandising strategist Dick Morris, who describes him with epic rudeness in his memoirs as ‘perpetually dishevelled, even sloppy in appearance, largely devoid of personality, tact or charm’. This was certainly not my own experience of Penn, who comes across as shy but engaging, and extremely clever. And — anyway, Dick — who’s top dog these days?