The Squeezed Middle: Employing the political tactics perfected by the American strategists Mark Penn and Dick Morris, Phil Goff is attempting to play both sides against "the squeezed middle" - a phrase which, along with "Soccer Moms" and "Reagan Democrats" has more to do with polling than principle.MARK PENN and Dick Morris have a lot to answer for. Between them they have managed to change the practice of politics in the modern world fundamentally. If you’ve ever wondered why today’s politicians never seem to do anything large or inspiring; or why modern politics appears to revolve around the petty and the paltry; then look no further than Penn & Morris.
It was Mark Penn who invented "Soccer Moms". This wonderfully evocative term was his shorthand way of describing middle-income mothers of young families more-or-less uninterested in political and economic issues – but absolutely committed to the moral and physical welfare of their families. The way to come at these voters, Mr Penn told his client, President Bill Clinton, was not via their back pockets, but through their values. Convince them that you care about the same things they care about, and they are much more likely to vote for you.
This is where Dick Morris enters the picture. His main claim to fame is as the inventor of the political technique known as "triangulation". His advice to President Clinton, as he contemplated his campaign for a second term, was brutally simple. Abandon fixed ideological positions and re-fashion your political message so that it incorporates elements of both the Left and the Right. In other words, if the liberal and conservative ideologies represent the base, your new position should be "above and between them" at the apex of a new "triangular" political configuration.
President Clinton’s ringing declaration that "the era of big government is over" and his support for Republican Party-inspired "welfare reforms" are two of the best known examples of "Clintonian Triangulation".
Political observers in the United States point to President Barack Obama’s latest White House-brokered compromise over bitterly contested tax and benefit legislation as evidence that he has embraced his Democratic Party predecessor’s "triangulation" technique. That President Obama recently played host to President Clinton at the White House has done little to dampen this speculation.
The Penn-Morris combination: intensive and continuous "neuro-personality" polling of the electorate; combined with the constant re-positioning of political parties – to keep them "above and between" the extremes of Left and Right. In the 21st Century, this is simply the way politics is done.
Our own prime minister, John Key, is a master of the Penn-Morris style of politics.
The National Party polls the electorate continuously, accurately tracking the smallest shifts in public opinion and building up "psychographic" profiles of the many (and often quite contradictory) components of the Government’s electoral base. Mr Key follows the results of his party’s polling assiduously – borrowing freely from the policies of both his right- and left-wing competitors to preserve the public’s perception of him as a leader refreshingly unencumbered by ideological baggage.
Labour’s leader, Phil Goff, attempted a little triangulation of his own last Monday with a speech to a gathering of well-heeled Auckland lawyers and businessmen entitled "The Squeezed Middle".
Promising a future Labour Government would "operate within tight fiscal restraints"(a clearly conservative commitment) he also pledged his party to growing "better jobs and higher incomes" (a traditional left-wing objective).
The subject of his speech – "The Squeezed Middle" – is clearly born of the same mixture of demographic and psychographic profiling that gave birth to Clinton’s "Soccer Moms" in the 1990s, and to "Reagan Democrats" back in the 1980s.
The picture it conjures up is one of deep social anxiety and economic insecurity. At its heart is the sort of middle-income family which did well in the boom years, but which now finds itself just a paycheque away from disaster. These are the folk who borrowed heavily – maybe to buy a better house or to set up a small business – and who now find themselves shivering in the bitter recessionary winds.
The "squeeze" they feel comes, on one side, from their fear of falling back into the poverty from which their family only recently escaped, and, on the other, from the pressure of a pitiless economic system that will crush their hopes without the slightest hesitation.
Mr Goff must know that such people are deeply conflicted. Strong believers in free enterprise, their values cast the poor as lazy "bludgers" – undeserving of the vast quantities of taxpayers’ money spent annually on their relief. But, they also know that if the worst happens, and they lose everything, it will not be for lack of hard work. Why doesn’t that count? They ask themselves. Why, when the chips are down, is the banker never your friend?
That’s the weakness of Penn-Morris politics. Power isn’t something that can be triangulated, and polling merely describes the voters’ predicament. Real politics is about making choices.
New Zealand’s problems need solutions: whether they be left-wing or right-wing solutions matters much less than locating a politician with the guts to give them a try.
This essay was originally published in The Press of Tuesday, 14 December 2010.
