Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Kiron K. Skinner is Associate Professor of History and Political Science at Carnegie Mellon University, and a member of the Defense Policy Board, the Chief of Naval Operations Executive Panel, and the National Security Education Board. Serhiy Kudelia is an adjunct lecturer and Ph.D. candidate at the Paul Nitze School of Advanced International Studies, Johns Hopkins University. Bruce Bueno de Mesquita is Julius Silver Professor and Chair of the Department of Politics at New York University, and a Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution. Condoleezza Rice is a Professor of Political Science at Stanford and a Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution. She is currently serving as United States Secretary of State.

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The Strategy of Campaigning

The University of Michigan Press

Contents

Foreword George P. Shultz.........................................................................................................viiAcknowledgments....................................................................................................................xi1 Campaign Strategy...............................................................................................................12 The New South Rises Competition for the Republican Presidential Nomination in 1968.............................................323 Down to Political Defeat Reagan's Inability to Break Ford's Coalition in the 1976 Primaries....................................914 Reshaping the Domestic and International Landscape, Part 1 The Long Road to the 1980 Presidential Election.....................1245 Reshaping the Domestic and International Landscape, Part 2 The 1980 Presidential Election......................................1636 Fighting the Nomenklatura's Privileges The Rhetorical Campaign of 1986-88.......................................................2057 Yeltsin's Winning Campaigns Down with Privileges and Out of the USSR, 1989-91..................................................2258 Conclusions.....................................................................................................................249Notes..............................................................................................................................261Bibliography.......................................................................................................................305Index..............................................................................................................................321

Chapter One

Baseball fans with enough gray hair to remember what the game was like fifty years ago will know that the complete game, today nearly an extinct species, was once the hallmark of a successful pitcher. Those who lament its passing may blame Casey Stengel, the legendary manager of the New York Yankees, who saw more clearly than others before him that extra games could be won by removing starters and bringing in power pitchers in late innings. Thus, while he did not invent the professional relief pitcher, he did more than anyone else to establish specialized relief pitching as a way to reframe baseball competition. In the process, he succeeded in defeating more opponents than any other manager of his day.

Similarly, Benny Friedman, elected to the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 2005, redefined how teams gained yards by making the forward pass a routine, rather than an extraordinary, weapon. Friedman recognized that his team's blockers could create a pocket to shield the passer. As he observed, "Charging tackles, bearing down on the passer, come at the original position of the passer, which is the apex of the angle.... The passer, [by stepping into the pocket] if he delivers the ball properly, will escape the tacklers. They will converge behind him." There is no football team today that does not exploit the pocket for exactly the benefits that Benny Friedman first saw.

Finding better ways to defeat opponents is the mark of a genius in sports, and it is the mark of a genius in politics as well. Genius is, of course, uncommon. Most competitors aim at incremental improvements within the prevailing understanding of strategy, rather than by redefining competition itself. This book is about political analogs of Casey Stengel and Benny Friedman: two extraordinary politicians, Ronald Reagan and Boris Yeltsin, whose strategies reframed the possibilities of political campaigns. Whether one likes or dislikes their policies, it is hard not to recognize that each reconfigured the political landscape of his day. Their success did not depend exclusively on skillful pursuit of office under the usual terms of competition. Instead, they redefined the rules of the game.

Although we examine campaigns by two politicians, this book is not primarily a biographical undertaking, another application of the "Great Man" view of history. Rather, it is a comparative study of campaign strategy. We use theory, archival evidence, and secondary sources to gain insight into how politicians thought to be extremists within their own political setting were able to redefine issues and change institutions so as to relocate the political center to their advantage. We believe that Reagan's and Yeltsin's campaigns illustrate general characteristics of political competition.

As in sports, so too in politics: defeat is the greatest enemy, to win the greatest goal. Those who lose often fade rapidly from public view. How many of us remember the American presidential candidates defeated during our own time, let alone before? George Romney, once a leading contender for the Republican presidential nomination, disappeared from national prominence following his failed 1968 primary campaign. Edwin Muskie likewise faded from electoral politics in 1972, as did the Democrat's 1988 nominee, Michael Dukakis. The 1964 Republican vice presidential nominee, William E. Miller, became so obscure that American Express used him in an advertising campaign that emphasized the once famous but now forgotten.

Defeat in politics usually ends public life. Yet some succeed in reviving their political career. Abraham Lincoln proceeded from defeat to defeat before achieving the presidency. After serving in the Illinois Assembly, Lincoln won one term in Congress, followed by a long electoral dry spell, including two failed attempts at election to the United States Senate, before he gained the presidency in 1861 and again in 1865. He relied in part on institutional innovation to win his second term, providing absentee ballots to soldiers so that they could vote from the front. Winston Churchill lost his first campaign for Parliament, only later to become a fabulously successful prime minister. He then lost to Clement Atlee in 1945, but overcame defeat and reemerged as prime minister in 1951. Richard Nixon, defeated for both the presidency and the governorship of California, resurrected himself in 1968, only to self-destruct in the Watergate scandal and then resurface as a prolific and influential writer and thinker on foreign policy.

The puzzle of how individuals return from the wilderness of political defeat deserves close attention. It may be that most failed politicians are just unlucky, while a few find an opportunity to win, hitting on the right argument at the right moment by dumb luck. If serendipity is the dominant factor separating winners from losers, those of us who are trying to understand historical outcomes should not portray victors as clever strategists when good luck is a better explanation. Indeed, we do not doubt the importance of serendipity in any politician's rise to high office. Quite the contrary. We are mindful of Napoleon's response when asked what qualities he most desired in his generals: "I want them to be lucky." It is a candidate's bad luck, in a sense, to adhere to uncommon opinions. Holding views judged by the majority to be wrong-however right those views may later prove-may create an impediment too difficult for a candidate to overcome. (On the other hand, holding popular but wrong views-the...