The Redhunter

1. The campaign must be centered on big ideas that reflect the candidate's philosophy and view that are perceived by vote3rs as important and relevant.

2. The campaign needs to be persistent in pursuing this strong, persuasive theme in a way that resonates with what voters know. This requires a campaign to have a clear awareness of the electorate's attitudes, and its candidate's strengths and weaknesses, as well as those of its opponent.

3. The third hallmark of a Rovian campaign is that it is driven by historical data. Past races can help you understand what might happen in the next. Democrats dominated Texas in the late 1980s. To find voters who might be drawn to a Republican candidate, I studied election patterns to find countries with strong support for Reagan in 1980 or 1984 but whose voters also chose Democrats in local races or for governor or senator. In 2000, hoping to pull some state s away from the Democrats for George W/ Bush's presidential race, I looked at places in Tennessee and Arkansas that had voted for GOP Senate and gubernatorial candidates in the 1990s while voting for Clinton-Gore in 1992 and 1996.

4. The fourth hallmark of a Rovian campaign is the use of sophisticated modeling to identify potential supporters and match them with issues that will persuade and turn them out. All kinds of publicly available information about voters can be used to predict which party or candidate someone will support, what issues will win them over, and the likelihood they will actually vote. That information can include, for example, their age, what kind of car they have... whether they have a gun... if or where they go to church.... There is no one piece of data that can predict the behavior of a voter: it's the relationship between all kinds of data points that can be revealing. So the modeling is complex and difficult to do, but it can make a huge impact by allowing a campaign to focus its energies on voters who are truly up for grabs and on those who need extra encouragement to turn out.

5. The fifth hallmark of a Rovian campaign is that it understands that there are right and wrong ways to criticize an opponent. Too many campaigns spend too much time going after their opponents in a scattershot way and on trivial issues. Bob Dole's 1996 campaign against Bill Clinton suffered from this problem. He attacked Clinton for, among other tings, cheating at golf. And the campaign of George H. W. Bush in 1992 also made the mistake of attacking Clinton's running mate, Al Gore, as an environmental extremist by calling him "Ozone Man."

6. The sixth hallmark of a Rovian campaign is that the campaign has a strategic plan, discipline, and a bias for action. It is structured to keep momentum. Second-guessing, or allowing warring factions to develop inside a campaign, is destructive. A Rovian campaign sets goals and repeatedly checks performance against those goals.

7. The seventh hallmark of a Rovian campaign is that it depends on the broadest possible use of volunteer-friendly technology. As one pair of journalists put it, "This may sound prosaic, but there is no way to overstate its relevance to Rove's success. His campaigns always had the most advanced gizmos." I have enormous respect for Net nerds, Applications Junkies, Tech Heads, and Data Dudes.

8. Finally a Rovian campaign is focused on collecting three vital resources:
a. Knowledge and information for the candidate
b. Volunteers to persuade and get out the vote
c. The money to make the other elements of the campaign possible.

Of these eight hallmarks, the first four are the most important, with the first being primas inter pares (first among equals). A campaign needs to be centered on a big theme that is in turn made up of big ideas that will capture the support and imagination of voters.

So as you can see a Rovian campaign is not about dishonest negative campaigning, underhanded dealings, and going all out to destroy your opponent, or any such nonsense.

Final Thoughts

I don't generally read these types of books, generally preferring more academic and analytical books on the issues of our day, especially when they're coupled with a lot of history. At least this isn't a 'kiss and tell' book, whereby the author has a major ax to grind. I find those impossible to deal with, because one of the basic rules of life is that you never get the full story or truth until you've heard both sides.

But this book was given to me by a friend, and given that I do somewhat admire Karl Rove, I decided to read it.

The book does provide a good history of the Bush years, and Rove relates in some detail most of the major episodes. His writing is clear and concise, although there were a few times I found myself skipping ahead. Even at 500 pages it's not a long read.

Although as mentioned Rove does not spend a lot of time settling scores, he does defend himself where necessary. Some on the left have seen him as the devil himself, accusing him of all sorts of dirty dealings during campaigns. As such Rove does go through some of the accusations, giving his side of the story.

All in all a good book, and a necessary read for anyone wanting perspective on the presidency of George W. Bush.