BY MICHAEL S. JOHNSON
I don’t know who is advising Rep. Charlie Rangel in his defense against ethics charges, but my guess is that he or she or they got a hold of a book on political campaigns by political scholars Jim Thurber and Candy Nelson of American University.
There’s a chapter in the book on playing defense in a campaign, featuring four classic categories of a good defense. The defense strategy was the creative invention of Jay Bryant, Buddy Bishop and Paul Newman. For those of a younger generation, Bryant, and his wife, Susan, Bishop and Newman were among a vanguard of political strategists in the pre-Reagan era, who helped sow the seeds of a Republican majority strategy.