Wipe out the psychosexual speculation on the "true" nature of Bill and Hillary Clinton's marriage from Maureen Dowd's latest, and what you're left with is a pretty good column on the absurdity of Mark Penn's Microtrends. "The chapters all read like reports that Mr. Penn wrote for clients," writes Dowd. "Whether or not they’re trends, they’re certainly micro — marketing studies gussied up as social science. As with Malcolm Gladwell’s 'The Tipping Point,' this book is less social philosophy than a fancy way to sell stuff."
The book is weird that way. The Microtrends really aren't about anything -- they don't fit into some overarching vision of American life, they don't help us explain our neighbors or better understand our world. Maybe they suggest niche markets for new products, but that's the sort of information that's best sold to companies, not released in hardcover. My eventual best guess was that the book exists not so much to sell "stuff" as to sell Mark Penn. After all, if only he can divine these emergent constituencies, then only those who hire him will be able to access their bounty. But I'm not even confident in that conclusion. Maybe he just got a flattering call from an agent and a big advance and signed up to do a book without really having a topic or the time, and so took the easy way out.
That said, I wouldn't use Microtrends as a way to understand the Clinton candidacy, which is really putting its focus on macro-issues (health care reform, Iraq) rather than micro-initiatives. I even like this "trapdoor" frame the campaign is current pushing:
Micro that ain't.
