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

Figure 1. A model of aspirant opportunism.

*In this research, opportunism is operationalized as a ratio statistic consisting of an aspirant's breadth of political experience relative to his/her depth of political experience.

nominating contests) structure the competition (tilt the game 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.

Time (or the political conditions and exogenous events particular to history) affects each variable in the model. Hence, in different times, aspirants would likely learn different lessons, express their opportunism differently, work differently to change the selection process and the parties, win their party nomination and the general election with differing strategies, and leave different partisan and presidential selection legacies to their successors.

Stepping back to embed this perspective in some of the more recent debates in the party literature, it becomes evident that it aligns with the “Schwartz-Aldrich model” of “politician-centered” parties. It agrees with John Aldrich, who argued convincingly that “the major political party is the creature of the politicians, the ambitious office seeker and the office holder. They have created and maintained, used or abused, reformed or ignored the political party when doing so has furthered their goals and ambitions. The political party is thus an ‘endogenous’ institution—an institution shaped by these political actors.”³¹