Sep

Hustle as a Campaign Strategy

With a mere 33 days remaining until Election Day, now is the time to get engaged. The most important election of our lifetime means that you should be out volunteering for a candidate – phone banking, writing letters, street canvassing, helping to organize, raising funds, etc. Here are some local campaigns.

Like all other forms of competition, elections demand strategic, operational, and tactical thinking to outmaneuver and defeat the enemy. Business literature abounds with minds like Michael Porter and Henry Mintzberg, who study how private companies can win business, remain innovative, and operate effectively as organizations. There’s much to be said about the thinking of warfare as espoused by Sun Tzu, Alexander the Great, von Clausewitz, and Rommel. In campaigns, as in war, you must hold the land through constant presence, while overwhelming, misleading, and outflanking your opponent. We hope our campaign managers are wise and learned, and have considered their full arsenal of political weapons and their proper use and limits of effectiveness beforehand. Many parallels can be drawn between these great strategic disciplines and democratic elections. However, there’s one facet that’s often overlooked and especially relevant this year: enthusiasm.

While volunteering 3-5 hours/day on an outstanding campaign this season, I keep repeating in my mind the title of an article I read while in college: Hustle as a Strategy. It was published in 1986 by Harvard Business Review, written by Amar Bhide. I confess to knowing next to nothing about Dr. Bhide, and indeed recall very few specifics from the article. But for me, the title says it all.

A dedicated campaign, resolute and headstrong, just keeps chipping away at their opponents lead. Keeping on message, sending out mailings, maintaining a street presence in rain or shine, and recognizing that in order to beat an entrenched incumbent it will come down to sweat as much as strategic thinking. This is accomplished through a certain hardheadedness on the part of the staff, but most critically an enthusiasm among the volunteer base who get out there and fight passionately for victory!

People on the street, shuffling back in forth from work in their own personal fog, get engaged and excited when they see campaign teams out on the street corners passing out literature and engaging the citizenry in discussion. It harkens back to the colonial days with their town hall meeting and pamphleteering.

We have successful archetypes to follow in our own history. Ben Franklin was not only a witty writer and godfather of American liberty, but owned a publishing house; Thomas Paine made the case for revolution through his own short piece called Common Sense; after severing ties with the Crown, the Constitution was adopted only after a vigorous public effort by Madison, Jay, and Hamilton known as the Federalist Papers. All of this literature had to reach the hands of constituents through eager canvassers whose excitement was palpable.

This year Republicans benefit tremendously from an enthusiasm advantage over Democrats. Millions of Democrats are despondent, unemployed, and jaded from Obama’s incessant, undelivered (and undeliverable) promises. The hard left is disappointed that the economy is still flat, Guantanamo remains open, healthcare “reform” turned out to be a corporatist scam, and partisan politics is as rancorous as ever. The Right sees Obama (and his Congressional counterparts) as a failure, a symbol of a counter-revolution against American values (a “Socialist,” as he’s been famously labeled). The critical difference is that the Right is willing to lead the way out of malaise, through a return to limited constitutional government and trust in the American people as opposed to the self-appointed ruling class.

This is reflected in the much maligned Tea Parties. Tens of millions of Americans who would otherwise be content spending their golden years playing golf and raising their grandchildren are engaged as never before in political activism. The youth, unemployed in numbers unseen since the Great Depression, are joining the ranks. And Americans of every race, creed, political stripe, and income level are beginning to realize that if we do not effectively check the unbridled expansion of our Federal Government, our debt will swallow us (and future generations) whole.

Republicans have every reason to be excited. We are resurrecting the Reagan spirit of optimism and democratic self-rule. We are again beginning to sound like a confident party who rejects meeting Democrats half-way with their schemes for income redistribution, class antagonism, and constant talk of victimization. Although our problems, particularly our financial problems, are indeed grave, they are nothing compared to the dark days of Washington, Lincoln’s solemn choices made in 1864, the suicidal Imperial Japanese and bloodthirsty brainwashed Nazis, or the Red menace. If political will is needed, it is that which is snowballing.

Join the cause in earnest!

Ryan Brumberg (14th Congressional District)

Susan Kone (8th Congressional District)

Michel Faulkner (15th Congressional District)

Saul Farber (26th State Senate District)

Paul Niehaus (75th Assembly District)

This post and the contents thereof are the views of only the author identified immediately above and do not necessarily represent the views of the New York Young Republican Club, Inc. (the "NYYRC"), its officers or its members. The NYYRC expressly disclaims responsibility for the contents thereof and by its charter documents may not, and does not, endorse any candidate for any office, except in a general election.