Posted on 09/12/2008 9:13:06 PM PDT by goldstategop
John McCain was trained as a fighter pilot. In his selection of Sarah Palin, and in his convention and campaigning since, he has shown that he learned an important lesson from his fighter pilot days: He has gotten inside Barack Obama's OODA loop.
That term was the invention of the great fighter pilot and military strategist John Boyd. It's an acronym for Observe, Orient, Decide, Act.
"The key to victory is operating at a faster tempo than the enemy," Boyd's biographer Robert Coram writes. "The key thing to understand about Boyd's version is not the mechanical cycle itself, but rather the need to execute the cycle in such a fashion as to get inside the mind and decision cycle of the adversary."
For a fighter pilot, that means honing in above and behind the adversary so you can shoot him out of the sky. For a political candidate, it means acting in such a way that the opponent's responses again and again reinforce the points you are trying to make and undermine his own position.
The Palin selection -- and her performance at the convention and on the stump -- seems to be having that effect. Obama chief strategist David Axelrod admitted of the Palin pick: "I can honestly say we weren't prepared for that. I mean, her name wasn't on anybody's list." But it was known that McCain's VP adviser had traveled to Alaska, and anyone clicking on youtube.com could see Palin's impressive performance in political debates. The McCain campaign shrewdly kept the information that she was on the short list and that she was the choice to a half-dozen people, who didn't tell even their spouses. The Obama team failed to Observe.
Then they failed to Orient. Palin, as her convention and subsequent appearances have shown, powerfully reinforces two McCain themes: She is a maverick who has taken on the leaders of her own party (as Obama never has in Chicago), and she has a record on energy of favoring drilling and exploiting American resources. Instead of undermining these themes, they dismissed the choice as an attempt to appeal to female Hillary Clinton supporters or to religious conservatives.
Then team Obama and its many backers in the media failed to Decide correctly, so when they Acted they got it wrong. Their attacks on Palin tended to ricochet and hit Obama. Is she inexperienced? Well, what has Obama ever run (besides his now floundering campaign)? Being a small-town mayor, as Palin said, is like being a community organizer, "except that you have actual responsibilities."
Is she neglecting her family? Well, how often has Obama tucked his daughters in lately? For more than a week we've seen the No. 1 person on the Democratic ticket argue that he's better prepared than the No. 2 person on the Republican ticket. That's not a winning argument even if you win it. As veteran California Democrat Willie Brown says, "The Republicans are now on offense, and Democrats are on defense."
Perhaps the Obama campaign strategists expected their many friends in the mainstream media to do their work for them. Certainly they tried. But their efforts have misfired, and the grenades they lobbed at Palin have ricocheted back and blown up in their faces. Voters are on to their game.
Pollster Scott Rasmussen finds that 68 percent believe "most reporters try to help the candidate they want to win" and that 51 percent -- more than support McCain -- believe the press is "trying to hurt" Sarah Palin. The press and the Democratic ticket are paying the price for decades of biased mainstream media coverage.
I am not the only one to notice that John McCain and Sarah Palin have gotten inside the Obama campaign's (and mainstream media's) OODA loop. Blogger Charlie Martin sprang into pixels on www.americanthinker.com before I could spring into print with this column. But as I write, Barack Obama is in his second daily news cycle of explaining why his "lipstick on a pig" comments are not a sexist attack on the hockey mom who compared herself to a pit bull with lipstick.
Robert Coram describes what can happen when one player gets inside another's OODA loop. "If someone truly understands how to create menace and uncertainty and mistrust, then how to exploit and magnify the presence of these disconcerting elements, the loop can be vicious, a terribly destructive force, virtually unstoppable in causing panic and confusion and -- Boyd's phrase is best -- 'unraveling the competition.' ... The most amazing aspect of the OODA loop is that the losing side rarely understands what happened."
John Boyd would have been a terrific political consultant.
"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." - Manuel II Palelologus
Cautiously Optimistic.
I do love your confidence, you keep me going.
;)
the No. 1 person on the Democratic ticket argue that he’s better prepared than the No. 2 person on the Republican ticket. That’s not a winning argument even if you win it.
I’ve always liked Barone’s work. I have two of his Almanac of American politics books.
Thanks for this post...nice read!
Perhaps the Obama campaign strategists expected their many friends in the mainstream media to do their work for them. Certainly they tried. But their efforts have misfired, and the grenades they lobbed at Palin have ricocheted back and blown up in their faces. Voters are on to their game.
I loved this paragraph!!!! It is truly right on the mark. bullseye! This is why we are seeing Oprah not allow Palin on, The View and Charles Gibson trying their best to crucify our candidate instead of interview or even help as Stephanolpolus did last Sunday with the “My Muslim Faith” instead of Christian faith. Voters are on to this....tired of the manipulation and it will and is showing in the polls. Enough!!!
Michael Barone explains how the McCain’s employment of the OODA strategery has demoralized, thrown off balance and locked the enemy into a self-destructive cycle that threatens to obliterate him! The Obama campaign doesn’t understand what has hit them and why its forcing them to play the election on McCain’s terms.
Team Obama is starting to get back into McCain’s OODA loop though. It’ll be done by at least next week unless they make the domestic policy shakup I’ve been emailing around...
Run, don’t walk, to your nearest library and read Coram’s biography of Boyd. It’s great.
ping
Brilliant.
The pick of Sarah Palin was just the beginning.
Having HER zero in on ZERO during her acceptance speech, rather than “running” against the other VEEP was the 2nd brilliant move.
It’s as though McCain threw the pit bull a bone and that bone was Obama.
Right off the bat , I’m sure that stunned them.
Team Obama now really has to re-orient itself and figure on new and unprecedented strategies.
I don’t think they’re smart enough in this shortened time-frame to come up with much of anything.
They’ll keep trying different things,and they’ll keep stepping in it, sort of like Al Gore in the 3 separate debates with Bush when he presented himself as three separate people, trying to see which one would stick.
None of them did.
It doesn’t help when , day after day, people like Charlie Gibson and those VIEW gals come across and either condescending , or clueless shrews, getting more and more nervous that the tide is turning against their shoo-in candidate, the Mocha Messiah.
“The Obama campaign doesn’t understand what has hit them “
The dems worst fear is that they would live in a nation where one of the people setting the trends, and moral example, for the Presidential Administration, is Sarah Palin.
There’s another term that fighter jock often use. It’s called crash and burn which is exactly what Obama is going to do.
Impressive both of Barone’s Almanacs?
As for the article, well...perhaps...I’m reminded of the last book of Tolkein’s “The Return of the King”.
Gothmog....these guys won’t go quitely.
Wow. Fantastic analysis.
I say this in a lot of my posts but I will continue to do so as I believe it’s imperative for all of us to remember.
Yes, we have a chance. But the other side has no line they will not cross to win (reference their attacks on Palin and her family and now on McCain’s disabilities as a former POW).
We must continue in this as though we are 15 points down across the board. Whatever state you’re in, do not take for granted that your state will go either red or blue.
We must ignore the polls. They’re moderately interesting but largely irrelevant and almost always skewed to effect the electorate. Plus, it’s the electoral college that we need to care about, not a general poll about what percentage of the people say they’re voting for McCain.
How so? Team Obami is on perpetual defense because it has contracted gaffitis by osmosis from the selection of Biden. It is a wonderful thing to behold!
Bingo!
No, if you saw THE VIEW today, it was Barbara Walters in self-destruct mode. She couldn’t even look at McCain as her shrill voice got higher and he was smiling. Cindy McCain didn’t answer the question of how many houses they had, and they all ended up with their mouths shut. It was funny....the left looked looney.
ping
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