Garrett 6
strategy. Even if such rules could be developed, they would become ineffective once the
opposition realized which strategy a campaign was following: “[M]ere articulation tends to push
a campaign rule toward obsolescence. A campaign organization that follows all the established
rules is at risk of defeat because its movements will be predictable,” (Burton and Shea 2003, 10).
Furthermore, “[u]nlike the rules of a formal system (arithmetic, for example), which strive for
completeness and consistency, campaign rules are lessons, reminders, and nuggets of advice
intended to repair an out-of-balance perspective or to reinforce a wise notion that might
somehow become lost,” (Burton and Shea 2003, 10). Even with their academic training, Burton
and Shea’s view represents a position shared by many political professionals.
At the other end of the spectrum lay more traditional works that emphasize rational-
choice behavior. Authors such as Sellers (1998, 159), find that, despite political consultants’
protests, congressional campaigns do, indeed, exhibit generalizable behavior which can be
developed into “rules.” Jacobson and Kernell’s (1983) strategic politicians thesis is the classic
example of a rational-choice approach applied to congressional campaign strategy. These works
take root in Mayhew’s (1974) classic statement that members of Congress are “single-minded
seekers of reelection” and therefore structure their actions to maximize their chances of being
returned to office.
Political Professionals and Campaign Crises
Existing campaigns and elections case studies usually do not generate theoretically
generalizable findings. (This is despite a large body of work that highlights binary decisions
such as whether to or not to run for office.) This lack of theory is particularly true for studies of
Convention