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

This intraparty competition between aspirants is riotous. Like vice presidents in a large corporation all aiming for the chief executive officer position, the competition is also continuous. It ceases only during those brief moments when the parties have chosen their presidential nominees, and even then, the peace is illusory. There is always another aspirant in the wings—even when that party has a president in the White House. This competition generates intraparty tension, and it sometimes causes a split that leads to the formation of a third party. In other words, intraparty cleavages are fostered by aspirants, like Tyler and Calhoun in 1844, who are pursuing their own presidential ambitions and working to forge a supportive coalition.²⁸

Aspirants not only vie for intraparty support, but they also compete against those whom they believe are aspirants from the opposition party, trying to prove that their party is the better of the two. Hoping to garner support from weakly aligned voters and groups connected to the opposition party (religious, racial, and ethnic groups have often been the targets of interparty competition), they steal each other's phrases and policies, reworking them to suit their own needs. Abraham Lincoln, who stumped in Illinois “with his whole heart” for Clay and was made a Whig Party presidential elector in 1844, described this interparty struggle with an anecdote in April 1859. In a letter declining an invitation to an Independence Day celebration, while eulogizing Jefferson and condemning slavery, he remarked on how the Republicans of his day were more the descendants of Jefferson than the Democrats.

Similar to these drunks, aspirants, through their efforts to strengthen their parties and win the presidency, at times, swap coats. This also makes