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
OODA is Machiavellianism redux. The rules for effective political warfare were written by old Nicolo during the renaissance. See Clauswitz also. I will wager there is not a university in America today that would offer a course in analyzing either of these strategists. Maybe the Naval War College. It has just become the PC status quo for so long for the Repubs to play by Marquise of Queensbury rules that a return to basics looks to an observer like a quantum paradigmatic shift. While the Democrats claw and scratch away at anything in their path to conquest and subjugation of the American people, the Repubs insist on nicey-nicey country club manners, consensus building, and reaching across the aisle. Keeping their gloved hands from ever getting soiled. If this came from McCain I would be surprised. He troubles me when he says he is prepared to find the “best minds” to serve in his administration, and then says that means he will be appointing Democrats as well. I can’t seem to get the bad taste of the Kennedy-McCain Immigration Reform Bill out of my mouth.
I think there is every reason for concern.
It will be too easy to get ‘comfortable’, and ‘relax’, thinking Sarah Palin is more than a human, and can do this all by herself.
We must support McCain, and Palin, and their families, and fight for the truth, regardless to how it ends.
Boy do I feel pumped. I posted this theory on FR on 9/29. Day One of McCain Palin. My only worry is now that Barone has outed McCain will the haloed one’s people know how to get Johnny Mac off their six? Hope not.
Obama's a punk. He's not used to not getting his way, and he doesn't like it. He and his Daley machine are like the wounded animal backed into a corner. Very dangerous.
Great post. Barone does a great job of analyzing the application of the OODA loop to politics. I had read a bit about John Boyd before and Barone's analysis is brilliant.
I don't think they have a clue about an OODA loop, let alone what to do about it...
This book about John Boyd is so great you need your own copy. The Fighter Pilot Who Changed the Art of War
by Robert Coram
PUBLISHER LITTLE, BROWN & COMPANY , © 2002
A biography of John Boyd, 1927-1997, called by some the greatest U.S. fighter pilot ever, whose manual of fighter tactics changed the way every air force in the world flies & fights.List price $27.95, but can be bought for as little as $14.00
>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...
What will be done by Next week?
What domestic policy shakeup?
Blah blah blah.
Agreed...so that means they may do something drastic which has as much capacity to destroy them and help them....and that's swap Biden for Hillary.
Its a very dangerous decision....I would rather not see it; however, the chaos it would cause would be beautiful to behold. But it has a chance, small, but a chance to be successful.
I think McCain needs to continue to use Palin to attack and mock Obama—this obviously unhinges O and really gets under his skin and causes him to make more mistakes.
McCain also needs to flesh out a reform agenda and bring the Republican Congressional candidates on board with a plan that would really, REALLY reform Congress—a Contract with America on steroids. Say something like “We can’t make progress on the great issues of the day until Congress itself makes changes.”
Run against Congress—that’s what McCain has to do, I think.
But keep on the attack, keep inside Obama’s OODA loop, keep him disoriented and always on the defensive.
What's going to be this year's version of punch card ballots and Diebold.
Do you think Hillary would argee to 2nd place on the ticket? I am doubtful. But I do think it a good idea to float the rumor. It makes the Democratic ticket look weak.
“Obama has attacked a saint ...” Actually, no, she’s not a saint, she more than that to us because she’s one of us, a Lady in full, a member of We The People. The fools of the left actually believe trying to smear Sarah Palin will empowewr their insidious capital. They thought that with championing abortion on demand. They’re in error. They have dead souls and don’t know it. They are making the contrast between their deadness and Sarah Palin’s aliveness as one of US a stark choice. They will not figure it out, even after Nov 8, 2008.
Absodoggonelutely right on...!
Yeah...it takes a jet fighter jock and an Arctic Moose hunter to get the OODA thingy.
Wow, did you create that graphic? It’s fantastic... spread it around.
The joke about this particular example is that he really believes he’s a gangsta instead of the pathetic little pansy ass he is.
Palin was insurance in case the Witch got the nod from the clods. Nobama, being overly full of himself, upset the road-apple cart and now, Sarah is way more than insurance, she's a rising star among Americans who are sick of politics-as-usual, empty suits as usual, hollow rhetoric as usual, and are optimistic about this country's future.
They could go with option two, but it's already too late. And they know it.
Which leads me to this: I hope Sarah's security detail is top-notch. She's running point now that conservatives have taken a new look at the ticket. A lot of folks aren't going to be happy with a woman at the controls of a wrecking-ball heading to Washington, D.C.
Chicago may be the home of dirty politics- with Arkansas and the boy from Hope coming in a close second. That's who were dealing with here. Obama and the Clintons are evil and I sense their desperation. Most of us go through life unconcerned with evil and it's effects. Not me, not this time. Too many groups that don't have America's best interests at heart have aligned themselves with the Democrats. This being a real fight between two real forces, we should be prepared for anything. Anything.
Here is wisdom.
I think you’re right...
He comes across as the kid that everyone bullied on the playground...
It really ticked me off when I saw the pictures of Obama playing basketball with a USMC tee shirt....
He is one sorry sonuvabitch who is certainly not entitled to wear that shirt.....
LOL. And Obambi can't even win that argument!! Sarah Palin is better qualified and better prepared than he is for VP or President.
I had this argument just now with a fervent Obambi supporter by email (friend of a friend), a guy who circulates unintentionally hilarious updates to fellow Obama cultists addressed to "The Ones" (I kid you not), and he had NOTHING to say except to sputter in outrage when I pointed out Obama's thinner resume.
I said that Obambi has done nothing in the US Senate in his brief time there, that his handful of years in the Illinois State Senate were totally without accomplishment (except to vote "present" more than 100 times and put his name on some bills and resolutions created by his mentor), and that someone with two years as Governor of a huge state (granted, a small population) and 10 years in city govt. including 2 terms as Mayor, had considerably more RELEVANT experience for higher office than a lightweight "legislator" devoid of any real accomplishments. Palin has executive and managerial experience, Obama does not.
Boy, did this guy sputter with rage, but he had no serious answer and he knew it. He just went back to incantations of "hope and change." This is part of the brilliance of the Palin pick: far from robbing the McCain camp of the "experience" argument against Obambi, it re-emphasizes it every time they try to use it against Palin. Any honest person (i.e., all but the Obama cultists) can see that Governor Palin has at least as much relevant experience as Obambi, so now he is left to arguing that he is in fact as qualified as the #2 on the Republican ticket.
I'd say he doesn't even win that argument!
What Barone misses is that Team McCain got inside 0bama’s OODA loop much earlier than the Governor Palin pick.
It was McCain who baited 0bama into his World Tour and Victory Speech in Berlin...then hit 0bama with the Brittany/Paris celebrity ad.
0bama’s been reeling for some time now. He’ll fall over soon enough.
Thanks. Yep, I did. I created it for my anti-liberal store.
I'd like to know ONE reason (for her) that Hillary would ever accept VP. And would Michelle (ma belle) ever allow this...
Never happen IMHO...
The shmoos are lathering themselves up with barbecue sauce. The rest of us are on full alert.
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