The 33 Strategies of War (77 page)

[
Christy
]
Mathewson in his later years recounted a knockdown incident from the first game of the 1911 World Series, which he won for the Giants, defeating the Philadelphia Athletics 2 to 1. Charles Albert "Chief" Bender started for the Athletics, and Bender was throwing harder that day than Mathewson had ever seen him throw. Twice Bender drilled Fred Snodgrass, the Giants' young center fielder. When Snodgrass came to bat for the third time--in a "pinch"--Bender smiled at him. "Look out, Fred-die," he said, "you don't get hit this time." Then he threw a fast ball at Snodgrass' head. Snodgrass ducked. Ball one. "If you can't throw better than that," Snodgrass shouted, "I won't need to get a hit." Bender continued to smile. ("He had perfect teeth," Mathewson remembered.) Then he threw a fast-ball strike that overpowered Snodgrass. "You missed that a mile," Bender said, grinning again. Snodgrass set his jaw in anger and began overswinging. "Grinning chronically," in Mathewson's phrase, Bender struck out Snodgrass with a curve that broke down into the dirt. Snodgrass was not afraid of Chief Bender's pitches. He was a solid hitter who finished with a lifetime average of .275. What happened, Mathewson said, was that a combiination, the knockdown pitches, the sarcastic banter, the condescending grin, distracted Snodgrass. Then, having struck out his man, Bender pushed the needle deeper and twisted it. "You ain't a batter, Freddie. You're a backstop. You can never get anywhere without being hit!" Although beaten that day, Chief Bender won two other games. The Athletics won the World Series, 4 games to 2. Across six games, the rattled Fred Snodgrass, a .294 hitter all season, batted .105. But as Mathewson interpreted the episode, he was a victim of gamesmanship, obviously and distinctly quite different from being terrorized. "Chief took Fred's mind right out of the game," Mathewson said.

T
HE
H
EAD
G
AME
,
R
OGER
K
AHN
, 2001

Interpretation

For a samurai, losing a duel could mean death or public humiliation. Swordsmen sought out any advantage--physical dexterity, a superior sword, the perfect technique--to avoid that fate. But the greatest samurais, the Bokudens and Musashis, sought their advantage in being able to subtly push the opponent off his game, messing with his mind. They might try to make him self-conscious, a little too aware of his technique and style--a deadly trap for anyone who must react in the moment. They might trick him into focusing on the wrong thing--the left hand, the scarlet headband. Particularly with conventional-minded opponents, they might show up late, sparking a frustration that would upset their timing and concentration. In all of these cases, a change in the enemy's focus or mood would lead to a mistake. To try to repair this mistake in the heat of the moment would lead to another, until the one-upped fighter might literally walk into the other man's sword.

Understand: what will yield the greatest effects in the game of one-upmanship is a subtle disturbance in your opponents' mood and mind-set. Be too direct--make an insulting comment, an obvious threat--and you wake them to the danger you represent, stir their competitive juices, bring out the best in them. Instead you want to bring out the worst. A subtle comment that makes them self-conscious and gets under their skin will turn them inward, get them lost in the labyrinth of their own thoughts. A seemingly innocent action that stirs an emotion like frustration, anger, or impatience will equally cloud their vision. In both cases they will tend to misfire and start making mistakes.

This works particularly well against rivals who must perform in some way--deliver a speech, say, or present a project: the fixating thought or bad emotion you create in them makes them lose touch with the moment and messes up their timing. Do this right, too, and no one will be aware of your involvement in the bad performance, not even the rival you have one-upped.

4.
In January 1988, Senator Robert Dole of Kansas could smell victory in his quest to become president of the United States. His main opponent for the Republican nomination was George H. W. Bush, the incumbent vice president in the administration of Ronald Reagan. In the Iowa caucuses, the first test in the primary season, Bush had been lackluster and had finished a distant third, behind Dole and televangelist Pat Robertson. Dole's aggressive campaigning had won him much attention--he had the momentum and was clearly the front-runner.

To Dole, however, there was one blemish to his great victory in Iowa. Lee Atwater, Bush's thirty-six-year-old campaign strategist, had spread to the media a story that questioned the integrity of the senator's wife, former secretary of transportation Elizabeth Dole. The senator was an elected politician of nearly three decades' standing and had developed the necessary thick skin, but attacks on his wife, he felt, were beyond the pale. He had a temper that his advisers worked hard to keep under wraps, and when the story broke, he lashed out at reporters--giving Atwater the opportunity to say, "He can dish it out, but if someone hits him back, he starts whining." Then Atwater sent Dole a ten-page letter enumerating the many times the Kansas senator had gone negative in the campaign, and this letter, too, made its way into the media. Dole was furious. Despite his victory in Iowa, he could not get over seeing his wife dragged into the dirt. He would get back at the Bush folk and Atwater.

Silence.--
The way of replying to a polemical attack the most unpleasant for both parties is to get annoyed and stay silent: for the attacker usually interprets the silence as a sign of contempt.

F
RIEDRICH
N
IETZSCHE
, 1844-1900

Next up was the New Hampshire primary. Victory here would put Dole well on his way, and he was ahead in the polls, but this time Bush came out fighting and the race tightened up. The weekend before the vote, the Bush people ran an ad portraying Dole as a "straddler," a man with two faces whose senate votes depended on expediency, not sincere belief. Humorous, deceptive, bitingly negative, the ad had Atwater's fingerprints all over it. And the timing was perfect--too late for Dole to respond with an ad of his own. The ad helped propel Bush into the lead and, a few days later, to victory.

Shortly after the results of the New Hampshire primary were in, NBC newsman Tom Brokaw caught up with Bush and asked if he had any message for his rival. "Naw," he replied with a smile, "just wish him well." Then Brokaw found Dole and asked the same question. "Yeah," said Dole with a bitter scowl. "Stop lying about my record."

In the days to come, Dole's answer was rerun again and again on television and discussed in the papers. It made him look like a sore loser. The press began to pile on, and Dole was ungracious--he seemed whiny. A few weeks later, he went down to a crushing defeat in South Carolina and shortly thereafter an even worse string of losses in the Super Tuesday primaries throughout the South. Somewhere along the line, Dole's campaign had crashed and burned. Little did he suspect that it had all begun in Iowa.

Interpretation

Lee Atwater believed that adults could be divided into two groups: the overly mature and the childlike. The overly mature are inflexible and overserious, making them highly vulnerable in politics, particularly in the age of television. Dole was clearly the mature type, Atwater the child.

It didn't take Atwater much research to see that Dole was hypersensitive about attacks on his wife. Replaying old charges against her in Iowa, Atwater was able to get under the senator's skin. He kept Dole's blood boiling with the letter that accused him of starting the dirty campaigning, and he upped the pressure with the perfectly timed ad that mocked Dole's record for New Hampshire voters. Although Atwater was the one pushing buttons, Dole's outburst to Brokaw focused all attention on him and his unsportsmanlike behavior. Atwater, a genius at one-upmanship, now stood back. Dole could only respond with more sourness, compounding the problem and leading to electoral suicide.

Glaciation
...is the name for the set of gambits which are designed to induce an awkward silence, or at any rate a disinclination to talk, on the part of possible opponents. The "freezing" effects of these gambits is sometimes of immense power:...If someone else tells a funny story, do not, whatever happens, tell your own funny story in reply, but listen intently and not only refrain from laughing or smiling, but make no response, change of expression or movement whatever. The teller of the funny story, whatever the nature of his joke, will then suddenly feel that what he has said is in bad taste. Press home your advantage. If he is a stranger, and has told a story about a man with one leg, it is no bad thing to pretend that one of your own legs is false, or at any rate that you have a severe limp. This will certainly silence Opponent for the rest of the evening....... If, for instance, someone is being really funny or witty and there is a really pleasant atmosphere of hearty and explosive laughter, then (a) join in the laughter at first. Next (b) gradually become silent. Finally (c) at some pause in the conversation be overheard whispering, "Oh for some real talk."

T
HE
C
OMPLETE
U
PMANSHIP
,
S
TEPHEN
P
OTTER
1950

The easiest types to one-up are those who are rigid. Being rigid does not necessarily mean being humorless or charmless, but it does mean being intolerant of anything that breaks their code of acceptable behavior. Being the target of some anarchic or unconventional antic will trigger an overreaction that makes them look sour, vindictive, unleaderlike. The calm exterior of the mature adult is momentarily blown away, revealing something rather peevish and puerile.

Do not discourage such targets from getting personal: the more bitterly they protest and criticize you, the worse they look. They forget that the real issue is how they are perceived by the people around them or, in an electoral race, by the public. Inflexible to the core, they can be induced to make mistake after mistake with the slightest push.

5.
In 1939, Joan Crawford (1904-77) talked her way into a relatively minor role in the film
The Women
: the lower-class perfume salesgirl who steals the husband of an elegant woman played by Norma Shearer. Crawford and Shearer were also bitter rivals in real life. Shearer was the wife of the movie producer Irving Thalberg, who always managed to get her the best parts. Crawford hated her for that, and for her haughty manner. Thalberg had died in 1936, but, to Crawford's disgust, the studio was still pampering Shearer. Everyone in Hollywood knew of their mutual dislike and was waiting for the showdown. But Crawford was the consummate professional on the set, and she kept matters civil.

The Crawford and Shearer characters in
The Women
share only one scene: the climax of the movie, when Shearer finally confronts Crawford about the affair with her husband. The rehearsal went well, as did the master shot showing the two actresses performing together. Then it came time for close-ups. Of course Norma Shearer went first. Crawford sat in a chair off camera, delivering her lines to Shearer. (Many actors would have an assistant or the director feed the lines while they retired to their dressing rooms, but Crawford always insisted on reading them herself.)

Crawford was knitting an afghan at the time, and as she said her lines, she knitted furiously, then stopped when it was time for Shearer to respond. She never looked Shearer in the eye. The needles made a loud clicking sound that began to drive Shearer crazy. Straining to stay polite, Shearer said, "Joan, darling, I find your knitting distracting." Pretending not to hear, Crawford kept knitting. Finally Shearer, a woman famous for her elegance, lost control: she
screamed
at Crawford, ordering her off the set and back to her dressing room. As Crawford walked away, still not looking at Shearer, the film's director, George Cukor, ran to her side, but Shearer commanded him to come back. Her voice had a bitter tone that no one there had heard before and few would forget--it was so unlike her. Or was it?

In 1962, Crawford and Bette Davis, longtime stars who had never appeared in the same movie, were finally to costar, in Robert Aldrich's film
What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?
Crawford and Davis had never been thought to like each other too much, but Crawford had encouraged the pairing--as good publicity, it would help to extend their careers. Once again their behavior was civil on set, but after the film came out, it was Davis, not Crawford, who was nominated for a Best Actress Oscar. Worse, she immediately started crowing about it, proudly announcing that she would be the first actress to win three Oscars. Crawford had only one.

Davis was the center of attention at the Oscars. Backstage before the event, she was unusually gracious to Crawford--after all, she could afford to be; this was her night. (Only three other actresses were nominated, and everyone expected Davis to get it.) Crawford was equally polite. During the ceremony, however, as Davis stood in the wings, waiting, she hoped, to accept the award, she got a shock: she lost. Anne Bancroft won for her role in
The Miracle Worker
. And there was more: as Davis stood taking it in, she felt a hand on her arm. "Excuse me," said Crawford, and she strode past the stunned Davis to accept the award on Bancroft's behalf. (The Oscar winner could not be there that night.) On what was supposed to be Davis's night of glory, Crawford had somehow stolen the limelight, an unbearable affront.