Jockeying for the American Presidency: The Political Opportunism ...

appear dependable and discerning, not impulsive or capricious. Years after his presidency, Richard Nixon wrote that his California gubernatorial run in 1962 was “a classic example of taking a poor risk and making a bad decision…you will generally find that bad luck comes when you have made a bad decision…But the road to victory is sometimes paved with defeat.” Although Nixon was able to rebound from his loss, he was well aware that it was a risk he should not have taken. Thus, whereas opportunism is narrowly operationalized in a manner building upon David Rohde's findings on “risk-bearing and progressive ambition” (as a ratio statistic consisting of an aspirant's breadth of political experience relative to his/her depth of political experience) in the quantitative models in chapter 2, it should be conceptually understood as a quality or trait that is possessed by an aspirant that includes both innate temperament as well as learned political abilities and strategies.³⁰

Presented in figure 1 is a model summarizing the aforementioned discussion about how aspirant opportunism relates to experience, electoral success, and the partisan changes and/or institutional developments that are observed in politics. It implies six 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 in America:

(1) Aspirants possess varying levels of opportunism.

(2) An aspirant's political experience—the lessons learned from trial and error as well as the observation and imitation of others in politics (e.g., exemplars, mentors, colleagues, and competitors)—relates to an aspirant's level of opportunism.

(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 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