I noticed his rhetoric began to change a little. He began to talk about the most effective missile defense being the one that can detect and destroy on launch. And he talked about the new threats of outlaw nations, those are his words. It was a death of a thousand cuts, and it took a thousand to defeat him. He couldn't get his base intact.
Some economists say it helped.
I think the lesson is not to give a Shermanesque pledge during a campaign. I would have advised him not to have done it, as political advice. But that's making a policy for political reasons. As I said, that would have been my political advice. His change opened things to Patrick J. Buchanan.