In my time as a political consultant, I observed that carrying out a campaign strategy was surprisingly simple. You settled on a basic strategy, emphasizing the candidate’s strong points on issues and character, framing the election in terms favorable to most voters. Then you just carried it out.

Almost always, events would intrude — campaign gaffes, unfavorable public polls, media controversies, surprise initiatives by the opposition. At such points, you’d get lots of advice, from inside and outside the campaign, about how you had to change course and do things differently. The hard part was distinguishing between the nine times out of 10 in which you should, diplomatically if possible, ignore such advice and stick to the strategy and the one time out of 10 when you should change course.