Thread by @LaraMBrownPhD, Thread: For #polisci colleagues unfamiliar with my first book (https://www.amazon.com/Jockeying-American-Presidency-Political-Opportunism/dp/1604977809), I thought [...]

Thread: For #polisci colleagues unfamiliar with my first book ( https://www.amazon.com/Jockeying-American-Presidency-Political-Opportunism/dp/1604977809), I thought I’d summarize the claims here — because while I published this in 2010 — much of what I said captures what happened w/ Trump & the GOP: Figure 1: A Model of Aspirant Opportunism

This model (p.20) “implies 6 claims, which are the foundation of this exploration into how presidential aspirants perceive and exploit opportunities (time, events, and conditions) and, as a consequence, drive and change politics [and parties] in America: ...

1) Aspirants possess varying levels of opportunism [ability to perceive & exploit opportunities to their advantage—measured in this work as breath of experience divided by years of experience—more breadth than depth are more opportunistic; most presidents have been around 0.5]...

2) An aspirant’s pol. experience—the lessons learned through trial and error as well as observation & imitation of others in politics—related to an aspirant’s level of opportunism [btw: running and losing is counted in breadth of experience—more on Trump’s exp. in a minute]...

3) An aspirant’s level of opportunism affects his/her electoral success
4) An aspirant’s level of opportunism affects the partisan changes (e.g., organizational, ideological, and coalitional) and institutional developments (e.g., alterations in the rules and procedures...

4 cont.)...governing the selection method) that are observed in politics
5) The partisan changes and institutional developments that are made (e.g., winner-take-all versus proportional representation in presidential nominating contests) structure the competition (tilt the game..

5 cont.)..one way or another) and affect an aspirant’s electoral success
6) Aspirants who win (nominees and presidents) affect partisan change and institutional development more than those who lose.”
I go on to explain that this model aligns with the “Schwartz-Aldrich model...

of ‘politician-centered parties’... that parties are ‘the creature of the politicians, the ambitious officer seeker and the office holder... an endogenous institution—an institution shaped by these political actors’”...
AFTER spelling out these theories, I delved deep in history

looking at presidential aspirants and the elections from 1796 through 2008. What I found was somewhat surprising was that the modern party era (primaries, rather than conventions for nominating) trended to “select” (work better) for “amateur opportunists” which meant that...

the aspirants who won had LESS actual experience (both breadth and depth) than their predecessors — e.g., Jefferson pre-1800 election was 17/36 (0.47), but GW Bush was 3/6 (0.5), so W. was slightly more “opportunistic” than Jefferson but had far less total experience than TJ.

This had implications — I feared what it might mean to have a system that favored presidential aspirants with little experience in politics (Why would they be committed to institutions, norms, or traditions? They had no experience with it and no vested interest in any of this)...

I explained that Truman believed that “statesmen are dead politicians” and if this was indeed true, I asked: “If presidential aspirants are no longer experienced politicians, can they ever, as Truman suggested, become statesman?”
I also noted that (p.220): “The aspirants who...

were successful during [the modern party era] were those who were perceived as charismatic leaders with strong ideological visions and as outsiders who would shake up Washington’s insider (read: broken and corrupt) culture.” I described that we were living in a time where...

aspirants first sought to build a “candidate-centered machine” and “movement” that would “take-over” the party’s establishment and sought a succeed in balancing the conflict between “sustaining ideologically responsible parties and transcending the constraints of partisanship”...

Finally, in my conclusion, I again raised the normative alarm about these “amateur opportunists” — wondering what their commitments would be to a system that they had no experience in!? Of course, here we are: with Trump who as a charismatic leader first overthrew his party..

and now has gone after the country. He has ZERO commitments to politics b/c he has NO experience with or interest in politics. Now, I didn’t see/believe how low things could go or get it all right, but we cannot walk away from the fact that aspirants are (and change) parties. END

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