The Way to Win: Taking the White House in 2008

Introduction

The following is from "The Way to Win: Taking the White House in 2008," by John F. Harris and Mark Halperin. The book is being published this month by Random House.

This book begins in the rain -- a cold, pelting, dismal rain that at times fell so hard it nearly obscured a remarkable moment in American politics. Up on the stage, huddled beneath umbrellas, were a father and son, the forty-first and the forty-third presidents of the United States. Joining them was the woman some believe is destined to become the forty-fourth president. All three of them -- George H. W. Bush, George W. Bush, Hillary Rodham Clinton -- had gathered in Little Rock, Arkansas, to pay tribute to the nation's forty-second president and dedicate the William J. Clinton Presidential Library and Museum. Rarely have the past, present, and potential future of American politics been on such vivid display. It was an arresting tableau, one that naturally evoked questions about the art of politics: what it takes to win the presidency, what it takes to survive in that office, and what has created a strange, generation-long cycle of Bushes and Clintons alternating as the preeminent figures in American life.

How has a supposedly egalitarian nation come to have its politics dominated by two competing dynasties? What have these families learned from observing and opposing each other? Why has American politics, during two decades of Bush-Clinton rule, turned so unruly, bitter, and destructive? As the country considers its next presidential choice, what lessons are there from the experience of these two clans?

This book is our effort to answer these questions.

Our conclusions all return to the same place. The long reigns of the Bushes and the Clintons are not a curiosity. They are more than a historical accident. These families have dominated American politics because, over years in the business, they have learned specific principles and practices. We call these the "Trade Secrets" of modern politics. The race for the presidency in 2008 will be framed by the examples of the past two people to hold the job. Cumulatively, their Trade Secrets are a formula: The Way to Win.

At the outset, we must clarify the intentions of this book. Bill Clinton won the presidency, and scuttled the efforts to blast him from it prematurely, in part because he is the most naturally gifted politician of his age. Some of his gifts flow from a combination of instinct and showmanship that will not be matched by anyone running for president in 2008, including his wife. But our focus is not on the unique aspects of Clinton's talent. It is on the prosaic ones. Clear lessons from his career are available to be borrowed by anyone from either party. The smart candidates already are doing exactly this.

We also must qualify our argument about George W. Bush. This book is not a history of his family or his political career. It is a book about political strategy. President Bush himself appears in these pages frequently, but the dominant character is his friend and longtime political adviser Karl C. Rove. This is not to suggest that Bush is a puppet, and Rove the brains behind the operation. Rove is an effective strategist because he has had exceptional rapport with an exceptionally capable politician who brought intuition, skills, and independent judgment to the task. But, in the Bush-Rove partnership, Rove's assignment was to master the theory and practicalities of winning elections. As with Clinton, our focus is not on the features of Rove's method that are sui generis, but on those that could be adapted by anyone serious about presidential politics.

Clinton and Rove understand how to win elections better than anyone of their generation. In making this comparison, it is not our intent to elevate Rove to the level of a principal. His power, while commanding, has been derivative. As with all campaign advisers and White House staff hands, he remains hired help. Nor is it our aim to reduce Clinton from president to campaign operative, nor to exaggerate his political talents. As detailed in these pages, his successes as a strategist were punctuated by extravagant failures. He won two elections in part because he had his own equivalents of Rove -- people such as James Carville and Paul Begala in 1992, and Dick Morris in 1996. Still, when it comes to understanding presidential campaigns, Clinton and Rove are of equal stature. While they are famous for their political smarts, there is little understanding of what specifically makes them so smart -- and makes them winners. Both gave interviews for this project.

There may be people who recoil at the suggestion that Clinton or Bush and Rove should be called winners. What is so impressive, Clinton critics might reasonably ask, about a Democratic president who never achieved a majority in either of his two presidential elections, and who helped steer his party to minority status in Congress? Does becoming the second president in

U.S. history to be impeached represent the way to win?

Bush skeptics, meanwhile, might wonder why, if this book is about winning presidential elections, it does not celebrate Al Gore, who won more votes than Bush in 2000. Even Bush's unambiguous 2004 victory was achieved by coolly exploiting the advantages of being a wartime president. Now that same war threatens to sink his presidency. If Bush and Rove know the way to win, why can't they figure out how to do it in Iraq?

We answer by emphasizing again what this book is and what it is not. This is an effort to identify and explain the strategies and techniques of those who have won presidential elections and policy battles over the past generation, and identify their singular skills.