Get for your publicity man some kid who had a high school course in journalism, no experience, but plenty of enthusiasm. Then stifle his one asset - enthusiasm -by back-seat driving on everything he tries to do.

Get a lot of expensive advertising literature, printed on expensive stock. Put your picture on it, using different cuts for each sort, and fill up the space with plenty of words in small type. Limit your precinct activity to having this junk distributed loose on the doorsteps. You have too few volunteers to ring all the doorbells; this gets you name all over the district, doesn't it?

Tie up a big chunk of your available funds in radio time. Hire fifteen minutes or half an hour and make a political speech, once or twice a week, or whatever you

can pay for. (Radio stations like cash on the table.) Take the radio time at the non-political rate; it does not permit you to mention the election but you get twice as much time for the same price. They will let you discuss issues as long as you don't campaign directly - and after all, your object is to educate the voters, isn't it? If they know what good things you stand for they will remember you on election day, won't they?

Plan some Big Events for the latter part of the campaign, a mass meeting, a dance, or a picnic. Have your volunteer workers concentrate on making this jamboree a success by selling tickets, and arranging a fine program. Make it the climax of your campaign.

Run for some good-sized office as your first try, such as congressman, or superior court judge. After all you are too big a man for those two-bit jobs like selectman or legislator.

Make some member of your family your campaign manager. This insures loyalty, on the part of the manager, at least.

Try to win the support of every possible sort of group by hedging your statements and carrying water on both shoulders. Chamber-of-Commerce meetings and funny-money rallies don't draw the same audience, do they? You can do a lot - a lot of something at least - by a wink and a nod. You are for the welfare of all the Peepul, and that is what matters-as for your methods, well, you have to fight fire with fire - it's a dirty business, isn't it?

(You're blinking well right it's a dirty business if you play iuforf way!)

Let each hopeful aspirant for patronage think that he has the inside track for your favor, but don't promise anything you can't weasel out of. (It doesn't really matter; you aren't going to be elected in any case.)

Don't sample your district to see how you are doing. Instead, surround yourself by your loyal supporters and listen to them. Kick out the pessimists; they are just trying to discourage your workers.

By running a campaign in the fashion described above you can enjoy every minute of it and have a wonderful time, right up to the announcement of the results. Even then, after your defeat, there are ways to turn a licking into outright political suicide.

You can skip the election party - the party after the polls are closed in which the workers either celebrate or console each other. This saves you the cost of the refreshments but doesn't cost you any votes, since the party would not take place until after the election is over, if you held it. It saves you embarrassment, too, since some of them are sure to get drunk.

Make yourself inaccessible the next day, too, and for several days diereafter; otherwise your supporters will swarm over you and cry on your shoulder. Don't they realize that you are nervously exhausted and have just been subjected to a shocking disappointment?

Of course you will have to thank them for their efforts. Just limit it to a mimeographed form letter. After all, it's impossible to write everybody a personal note; they ought to realize that.

Then bolt the party. This was a primary you just lost, naturally, since your methods would never take you to the finals. Neglect to support the member of your party who defeated you. You are morally justified; he had some of the worst elements in town around him- utterly shameless politicians. Not only did they tear down your signs, but they practically bought votes. And they dug up some things in your past and put them in die worst possible light-libel, really. You can never forgive him for that and no reasonable person would expect you to.

So take a walk. Do it literally - you can always be called out of town. If anybody ever needed a vacation, you need one now; it is a natural thing to do. So take a walk; hole up with kin folks, back in the sticks, until the finals are over.

The above routine entitles you to pose the rest of your life as a man who is disillusioned through bitter experience. You can hold forth on how democracy is a nice idea but won't work in practice, and how this country will some day have to feel the firm hand of authority - either the Best People will have to assert themselves and rule with no nonsense, or some rabble-rousing demagogue will ruin the Republic. You know - you've been through the mill!

(I'm sure you have all met this guy at some time or other.)

The above horrible example may seem too perfect to be true, but every wrong move depicted above occurs in every campaign, committed by some of the candidates, every year throughout the country. Many campaigns show the majority of the above errors. I recall one copy-book example which had all of the above mistakes - except that, wonderful to see, the candidate did not become disillusioned. He was bright enough to learn. After bolting the party he eventually came back, admitted his error, took off his coat, got to work, and rehabilitated himself.

How to Win a Campaign: Let us say it again: The key to success in politics is to remember at all times that votes are what you are after and that the votes are in the precincts.

They aren't downtown in the politico-financial district. They aren't at club meetings, not many of them. Of course you pick up odd votes wherever you find them, but the club meetings are primarily to arouse and hold together your volunteers; individually there aren't enough votes in political organizations to carry an election. Rallies are for morale building primarily and secondarily for publicity, but the persons who attend them have already made up their minds how to vote and can be counted on to vote, whether the rally is held or not.

The vote you need to win lies on the other side of a dosed door in a private home; you have to punch that doorbell to get it. There is no substitute.

Having lined it up, you have to be sure it reaches the polling place-and that calls for more individual action.

It isn't hard to get adherents to your cause. The vote you are looking for is either already on your side and needs simply to be located, or it is one which can be switched to your side (from a condition of "no opinion") just by stating your case and asking for support. The "hard cases" should be left alone; it's like butting your head into a stone wall.

Your real problem, then, is not selling your bill of goods, but finding your customers and getting them to die polls.

And that, compatriot, is some problem!

You are hardly ever licked by the opposition; you are licked by your own friends who did not vote. I once lost an election by less than 400 votes; in the post-mortem I was able to tabulate names of more people than that who were personal acquaintances of mine, had promised me support - but did not vote. The shortcoming was plainly one of the election day organization. Forty election-day volunteers could have swung the district.

Unfortunately the district had been conceded as hopeless by everyone but myself and a handful of stalwarts, and we could not manage to be enough places at once on election day.

Earlier in this book I have described how Charles Evans Hughes lost the presidency when a shift of less than one ten-rfiousandth of the vote could have elected him - if the effort had been applied in the key state. The 1944 election is much more typical - with respect to statistics, not issues.