There have been a number of insightful commentators who have pointed out that by choosing Governor Palin as his Vice Presidential partner, Senator McCain got inside the Obama Campaign's OODA Loop.
What that means is that he pulled off a surprise move with a timing that caught them off-guard. He changed the game. The weekend was not going to be about basking in the glow of their convention, it was all about McCain and Palin.
The concept of fighting inside the OODA Loop was developed by Colonel John Boyd, one of America's greatest fighter pilots and a strategist who was under-appreciated in his lifetime.
What that means is that he pulled off a surprise move with a timing that caught them off-guard. He changed the game. The weekend was not going to be about basking in the glow of their convention, it was all about McCain and Palin.
The concept of fighting inside the OODA Loop was developed by Colonel John Boyd, one of America's greatest fighter pilots and a strategist who was under-appreciated in his lifetime.
Charles Krauthammer, though was unimpressed. He wrote:
The McCain campaign is reveling in the fact that Palin is a game changer. But why a game changer when you’ve been gaining? To gratuitously undercut the remarkably successful "Is he ready to lead" line of attack seems near suicidal.With all due respect to Dr. Krauthammer, he is not as good a combat pilot as John McCain.
The nomination of Governor Palin does not gratuitously undercut the leadership line of attack, because Senator Obama is manifestly unsuited to lead because of his inexperience, his hard ideological leftism, and his associations with some of the creepiest mentors who've floated to the surface of American public life in recent memory (Wright, Pfleger, Ayers, Frank Marshall Davis). So that story can still be told.
Moreover, Dr. Krauthammer doesn't yet understand that you win battles by demoralizing your opponent, by repeatedly hitting him in surprising ways, too rapidly for him to react. By the time he thinks he is ready to react to one blow, he is being hit somewhere else with something different. This is what makes his crumple and collapse. Former combat pilot John McCain understands this.
Look what has happened to the Obama campaign in recent weeks: his triumphant tour of European capitals won him supporters who don't vote in the USA and doubt and ridicule at home; his self-aggrandizing megalomania was countered with the successful celebrity counter-attacks; his attempt to link Senator McCain to Jack Abramoff through Ralph Reed enabled Senator McCain to bring up Obama's intimate ideological association with Bill Ayers; and the whole Democrat convention is now dust in Governor Sarah Palin's wake.
I will be very interested as to how the McCain campaign manages the Republican Convention and Hurricane Gustav. I expect that the combat pilot will show how as a President he might react to unexpected trouble. And that demonstration will be another stunning blow to the Obama movement.
3 comments:
though it helped him in the polls, the experience/commander in chief line of attack might have never gotten mccain OVER 50%.
it helped hillary, but not enough. because though comparably better than obama, she was not a true commander in chief-type either - her CV wasn't much better on this front.
i think the thing to remember it this: we're in a change year.
palin helps mccain re-acquire the change-agent mantle. reformer. pork-buster.
the pork-crap hurt the gop in 2006.
and - as you point out - palin still enables mccain to attack obama, because obama's basic unfitness flows from his own CV and it pales in comparison to mccain - truly the most ready person in the USA.
Quite right. According to the report in the Wa Po, the McCain strategists had already concluded that the experience-inexperience meme had been taken as far as it could go; and they knew it didn't beat BHO for HRC, either. I'll take their judgment over Dr. Krauthammers on this one.
The Republican Convention will be turned into a 'call to help' for the people affected by the hurricane led by McCain.
He will not be making up for the Katrina hurricane but leading in his own way and showing Americans where the real leadership is at.
The failures of Katrina can be solely laid at the feet of the Louisiana Government, and the cities mayor - they did not prepare, did not use their resources, and blamed the government for not doing the job for them.
And the people still voted some of the same clowns back into office, and again if the government wasn't there to evacuate the people, the same crisis would have happened.
I really liked Nagans speech this morning telling people that they should be scared. - Way to go, instill Panic in the citizens and show them that you are not confident as a leader to make sure the people are not properly prepared.
What a liberal piece of work Nagan is.
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