Tips for Gordon

Hillary’s guru has some tips for Gordon

Matthew d'Ancona

19 September 2007

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

Although Microtrends is not ostensibly a manual for winning elections — ‘I won’t be able to write something like the Campbell diaries’ — it is full of clues to future Clinton strategy, and tips for others seeking power. The radicalisation of illegal migrants to America, Penn thinks, could determine the next presidential election because their grievances will encourage their legally settled relatives to register and vote. ‘The most powerful political force in [America],’ he says, ‘and the most important voting bloc in the upcoming elections, may not even be able to vote — but their cousins can. And that may make all the difference.’

As a veteran of the 2005 British general election, he has a related warning for the main political parties in this country. ‘I think the Conservatives went too hard on [immigration] in the last election because they had a consultant from Australia [Lynton Crosby]. The experience in Australia was that they could be really hard on the immigration issue. I think the experience here was quite different. People here wanted something done about the problem, they wanted modern methods brought to it. But on the other hand, they wanted it solved, not a police state.’

Another of Penn’s 75 sub-categories is ‘Impressionable Elites’, the chatterers and professionals who, he says, are so comfortable and affluent that, ironically, they are much more interested in personality, soap opera and gossip than in substantial policy debate. ‘The so-called herd in America is better educated and more issue-focused than ever,’ he says. ‘Today’s elites are like perpetual college students, far removed from the experiences and struggles shaping everyday American life. And so it is a lot easier to spin America’s elites than it is to spin the voters.’