Who doesn't love a good metaphor? A metaphor can take a drab or difficult subject, and turn it into something compelling and relatable. So it is with strategic political decision making - something relatively few Americans have participated in at a national level. So, to understand and discuss this somewhat mysterious process, we discuss politics as poker, as baseball, as football, as negotiating purchase price, and of course, as chess.
Chess has long been a favored metaphor for politics and warfare. After all, it is the game of kings. It may have peaked in America in the 1970's, when Bobby Fischer thrilled the country, won a world championship, and beat the Soviets. Still, chess clubs continue to be found in schools all over the country, online chess has made the game more accessible than ever, and people are generally familiar with the game.
As chess developed, the pieces themselves, and how the pieces moved underwent changes, but the board mostly stayed on the same two dimensional plane. In the late 19th and early 20th century, some attempts were made to create three dimensional chess, played on several planes, and this attempt was much later reimagined and popularized by Star Trek. Most recently, the phrase 11th dimensional chess has entered the public nomenclature. If my Googling is Correct, it was coined by Daily Kos's very own Armando in early 2009, writing on TalkLeft at the time.
I don't want to get into a pie fight about whether or not the President is playing 11 dimensional chess when he makes strategic decisions. Rather, I want to provide a brief introduction to strategy in chess, and how our political leaders could learn from that strategy.
Now, at the outset, it should be noted that chess is a poor metaphor for politics. Every chess game starts the exact same way - every piece in the same position, both players having the same amount of pieces, and white moving first every time, which gives the white player a significant advantage. Both players are trying to achieve the same goal - checkmating the other's king. The political landscape is not so, as various players bring vastly different amount of resources to bear on a universe of issues and problems. That being said, the strategy and tactics of chess do have universal application.
Every game of chess can be broken down into three phases: the opening, the middlegame, and the endgame. I'm going to simplify a bit, but bear with me.
In the opening, the player is trying to develop his pieces so that they are in the most effective place. Chess theorists have written tome after tome on the theories behind opening, and for expert players, the opening is almost by rote, as they have memorized and internalized a large variety of potential openings and the moves which should follow therefrom. The metaphor for military battle is a marshaling of resources, and marching troops into position from where they can most strongly attack or defend.
A political player is trying to bring about action on his chosen issue, and make sure that the terms of the debate itself are favorable (the Overton window). The player also wants to make sure that his allies and supporters are positioned for action. For a hypothetical example, imagine a Democratic President trying to do tax reform. He must gather his allies in other political organizations, prime his supporters to be prepared to apply political pressure, and make sure that the debate isn't about "Tax Relief" but about "Tax Fairness," for example. To the extent a politician has accumulated political capital, now is the time to spend it - unlike in chess, where every move is "free," a politician has to spend his accumulated capital to even play the game.
After the opening comes the middlegame, when the pieces are in place and a battle for strategic domination begins. In chess, that means controlling the center of the board. To an untrained eye, this is where the battle "begins," because this is when the front lines are joined. Of course, both sides have actually been maneuvering for favorable ground since the very first move. Both players strive to control the center, because if the opposing player wins that territory, the king in the player's rear may soon himself come under assault.
In politics, this is also the battle for the center. In the opening, the player has already tried to set the terms of the debate. Now, the debate is joined, on the terms dictated by the player. The goal? Capturing the elusive center, or moderate, voter. In our two party democracy, team Red will always have at least 1/3 of the vote, and team Blue another 1/3 - you've got to get that middle 1/3 on your side to provide a public "mandate" for your proposal. The allies and supporters you've lined up are unleashed in a coordinated effort to push the needle in your favor.
Last, in chess, comes the endgame. Where the middlegame was the grand strategy, the endgame is focused on tactics. This is where Hollywood will show how smart someone is, by having the actor briefly glance at a chess board and announce "Mate in four." Chess is a game of action and reaction. Once you can force your opponent to react to your moves (or else risk certain loss), you can start planning whole series of moves and forced reactions (hence, the player can through a series of forced reactions win the game, no matter what, in four moves, aka "Mate in 4."
Now, this may be controversial, but I'd say the entire business of drafting and legislating a bill that makes it through Congress is all endgame - the terms of the debate were set long before, and the political calculations have all already been made based upon what the player's saw brought to bear in the middlegame. Tactics are very important, and understanding the details of the sausage making is crucial, because you can still lose despite having a favorable strategic advantage - but more than likely, based upon the strategic struggles, the outcome is not really in any doubt.
The current Fiscal Deal is difficult to evaluate in the terms laid out above. On the one hand, viewed on its own terms, the President's supporters can say he decisively won. On the other, the President's liberal detractors can be despondent that he gave away the store. I think the difference is in defining what game the President was playing. Was the fiscal cliff one game, and the upcoming sequestration expiration, the debt limit, and the continuing funding resolution all new games to tackle? Or were they all part of larger game? I want to say, I don't think either view is necessarily wrong, although I'm inclined to agree with the latter.
And to come back to chess, I think there's a parallel in what the President just did. In chess, one strategy is called a gambit. In a gambit, you purposefully sacrifice one piece, giving up material, in order to gain some other favorable advantage. President Obama just played a tax cut gambit - the expiring rates are now set in stone. He budged on $250,000 in order to get a deal through. Now, this is where it's very important to understand what game the President is playing (keep in mind, there is no right answer for this). If the President was just playing at getting a deal, giving up $250k was a successful gambit, as he won the game.
However, if the game is still ongoing, and we're still in the grand strategy of the middle game, the President just played a very risky gambit. The tax rates were a very important piece - they were all about to return to Clinton-era rates, and the Republicans would have been desperate to deal to lower them. Now, those rates are set in stone. President Obama just sacrificed that piece. Is he playing several moves ahead? Does he see in the upcoming endgame of the sequestration, funding resolution, and debt ceiling some tactical combination that he's not telling anyone else about (i.e., playing in 11 dimensions?) Was the advantage he gained - a split in the Republican party, forcing them to raise taxes on the wealthy for the first time in forever, and positioning for the upcoming fights - worth the piece he sacrificed? We will see.
The other lesson from chess is that so much of this fiscal deal was decided long, long ago, in its opening. I'd say it started when the deficit scolds first screeched, and much of it was set in stone when the President reacted by embracing austerity-lite and setting up the Simpson-Bowles commission. That determined, long ago, the terms of the debate today. We're just living through the consequences of playing that game.