Party Games: What Malcolm Turnbull borrowed from Bill Clinton

MALCOLM Turnbull has borrowed a tried and true tactic from a fellow politician to tell voters about what his values are and where they stem from.

WE’VE had a flurry of backstories from our political leaders this week led by a personal video featuring Malcolm Turnbull talking about his humble origins with his single father Bruce and his estranged mother, the flamboyant writer and academic Carol Lansbury.

It looked like what it was - an attempt to humanise someone who’s been successfully pigeonholed by Labor as a rich guy from Sydney’s eastern suburbs who’s out of touch with everyday working families.

Turnbull’s effort is short - just a minute - and very emotional, with the Prime Minister talking about the loss of his father and how he can’t bear to let go of any memory, not even the smallest, that maintains the contact that was so formative to his own growth and being.

Bill Shorten hasn’t done a video but his own story of his growing up - which was quite different to that of Turnbull - is well recorded.

Shorten was guided by his work choices from his family’s example - a dad who was a union activist and had plenty of union and Labor figures visiting the house. It’s no great wonder Shorten joined the party at age 17.

In a 2014 profile, Shorten talked about the distance between himself and his father after the family marriage broke down and his pride in his mother returning to study, getting a law degree and graduating as a teacher.

“I had a strong mum, maybe not enough approval from my dad,” said Shorten. “Sometimes you make up for things you didn’t think you had in your childhood.”

Of course, these backstories are nothing compared with the gold standard in this niche of political messaging.

That was in 1992 when troubled Democratic candidate Bill Clinton brought forward a video he planned to show at the nominating convention.

It was a 14-minute tour de force that went through the life of young Bill growing up in that almost mythical Arkansas town Hope with his mother, having been born three months after his father died.

Three things stand out: the value Bill’s mother placed on education for her beloved son; how a 13-year-old Bill stood up to his stepfather, a violent alcoholic, and told him he was never to hurt his mother again; and, finally, how a seven-year-old Clinton, learning Arkansas was on the bottom of national tables said if the state would let him, he’d get it off the bottom.

It’s still the best backstory video a politician has ever made and no doubt contributed enormously to Clinton’s 1992 victory.

Famously, the video finishes with these words, “I still believe in the promise of America and I still believe in a place called Hope”.

Originally published as Party Games: What Malcolm Turnbull borrowed from Bill Clinton