This is an elaboration of a comment I made in
Chris Bowers' diary.
I'm a go player. If you're not familiar with go, it's an ancient strategy game that originated in Asia, in which two players place pieces in an effort to control the greater amount of territory on the board. A game in progress looks like this:
I find certain go concepts useful in thinking about presidential politics. I'm going to introduce a few here, then discuss what they mean in this year's race.
First of all, go has a handicapping mechanism so that two players of differing strengths can play a balanced game. A player's strength is measured in
kyu (amateur ranks) or
dan (master ranks). As a player increases in strength,
kyu numbers count down, but
dan numbers count up, so a 3-
kyu player is stronger than a 6-
kyu, but a 6-
dan is stronger than a 3-
dan. For every difference in rank, the weaker player (who always takes black and plays first) is given a handicap stone in a strategic position on the board. Therefore, the 3-
kyu is said to be "three stones stronger" than the 6-
kyu. A game between them would start out looking like this:
Note that black begins with influence over three corners of the board. The corners are crucial in go, because they can be surrounded most efficiently -- that is, they get you the most territory with the fewest stone placements. The sides are the second highest priority. The center is the lowest -- surrounding territory there takes the most work and offers the least reward.
The terms sente and gote concern the concept of initiative. Roughly speaking, a player in sente has the initiative, and a player in gote doesn't. More precisely, a sente move (or sequence of moves) is one that forces your opponent to respond, then leaves you with the freedom to play anywhere you like on your next turn; a gote move is one that you are forced to make by your opponent, after which he gets to play anywhere he likes. (I like to say that sente is when you're driving the bulldozer, and gote is when you're the dirt.) A key to effective play is keeping sente as long you can and winning it back whenever possible.
In any given game, eventually the whole board will be covered, so every game is a race to surround territory faster than the other guy. At all times, you have to strike a balance between speed and security -- an impregnable wall won't surround much territory, while a huge swath of territory will have gaps where your opponent can reduce (push against your border, making a dent) or invade (play in the heart of your territory with the hope of stealing some or all of it). How you play depends in part on whether you're ahead or behind. The player who controls more territory is better off playing a steady game, securing what he's got and expanding at a measured pace. The player who controls less territory has to play more aggressively to close the gap -- take bigger leaps, invade here and there, and above all, stay in sente.
OK, time to bring this back around to politics. The presidential race is also a race for territory, measured in electoral votes. The Republicans start off with roughly three-fifths of the EVs they need to win tied up in safe states; the Democrats, on the other hand, start with only about one-fourth. This makes the situation equivalent to a handicap game in which the Republicans always get the extra stones, regardless of the relative strengths of the players! So, to begin with, the Democrats have to choose a candidate who's more skillful than the Republican, in this case, Bush. That's not a huge worry; there are several this year.
What the Democrats should worry about is finding a candidate who will follow the correct strategy. It's the nature of the game that the Democrat starts from behind. They cannot, therefore, play cautiously -- to do that is to invite defeat. To close the gap, the Democrat has to play an attacking game. He has to play aggressively, reduce and invade, take risks, steal votes from the Republican while building up a store of his own, and above all, maintain sente.
A word about what sente means in campaign terms: You don't want to get the last word in any exchange -- you want your opponent to get the last word, but you want it to be one that you don't have to answer. Always, always, always, you should be dictating the terms of the debate, not letting your opponent dictate them to you.
The other thing the Democrat has to do is take advantage of the Republican's errors. The player who's ahead should play cautiously -- but today's Republicans are bred-to-the-bone attack dogs. A quiet game is anathema to them. They will attack -- and they will overplay. To win, the Democrat must not only maintain his own offensive but also skillfully turn the Republican's overplays against him.
Go is a game that has spawned many proverbs. Here is a short selection of them, translated into political terms:
- "The enemy's key play is my own key play." That is, an exchange is often won by the person who plays first on a vital or contested point. This can mean that a hot-button issue will be "won" by the candidate who publicly cuts to the heart of it first. It can also mean that a state will be won by the first candidate to hit it with the right appeal. The Commonwealth Institute's report "Beyond Red and Blue" shows that many states are politically divided -- which is to say, they're juicy territory for both the Democrat and the Republican, and the aggressive Democrat needs to hit them first.
- "When your opponent has two weak groups, attack them both at once." That is, if you can build strength with which to attack the second group by attacking the first, you should do so deliberately. Go is full of sacrifice plays and "judo" -- you often play in one direction in order to gain strength in the other. If the opponent is weak in a smaller contested state and in a larger one, take him on in the smaller one in such a way that it bolsters your position in the larger one -- then seize the larger one.
- "Contact fighting is for defending, not attacking." "Contact fighting" means playing your stones immediately adjacent to your opponent's. Since it deprives your own stones of freedom as well as his, it's not an effective way to attack. I see contact fighting as being equivalent to negative campaigning -- it can hurt both sides, but sometimes you've got to do it to solidify yourself. You shouldn't apply it offensively, however, unless you know you can outmaneuver your opponent. When attacking, it's better to keep a bit of distance, outrunning and outflanking your opponent instead of getting in his face -- then, once he's surrounded, going for the squeeze.
- "The third line is for territory, the fourth for influence." This has to do with where players place stones during the opening; they refer to the lines parallel to the edge of the board. Playing along the third line secures territory in the corner and along the edge. Playing along the fourth line builds "thickness" that can be projected into the center. Note that the center of the go board doesn't necessarily correspond to the political center. I'd draw the parallels more like this: The corners are the "base," the safe states, the ideologically oriented voters whose support you must have to win (say, New England and the South). The sides are the large, hotly contested states (say, Illinois, California and Pennsylvania) -- this is closer to the concept of the political center. The center of the board is the small fry: low-EV states that could go one way or the other (say, Delaware, Maine and Nevada), along with undecided and disaffected voters who have the potential to cause a swing but who are difficult to appeal to consistently.
- "The poor player plays the opponent's game for him." I think we know what this one means all too well.
To sum up, the ideal Democratic candidate, the truly electable one, has three qualities:
- He's stronger than the Republican, enough to make up for the electoral handicap.
- He correctly chooses an aggressive, risk-taking strategy.
- He exploits the opponent's overplays.
It's very dangerous for Democrats to equate "electability" with centrism, inoffensiveness or any other safe and cautious quality. These traits do not fare well against an aggressive opponent who starts the game with a sizable lead.
For about the most graphic illustration possible of the necessity of skill, aggressiveness and flexibility in a presidential campaign, compare the successful runs of Bill Clinton with the unsuccessful runs of Michael Dukakis and Al Gore.