The OODA Loop And Palin

Charlie Martin writes a great column at American Thinker about how McCain is using his superior OODA loop to run circles around Obama right now:

Man, is this guy a fighter pilot, or what?

There are two military concepts here that explain the (absolutely spectacular) choice of Governor Sarah Palin.  Both of them are important to the training of a fighter pilot, and while one of them wasn't formulated until after McCain's flying career was over, it was an observation based on what fighter pilots had to know.

One of them is the "envelope" -- which is to say the parameters within which a fighter airplane must operate.  The envelope can be seen as a sort of egg-shape, based on how quickly a plane can turn and maneuver.  If your plane as a "tighter envelope" than another plane, the pilot has the advantage in a dogfight: you can turn inside the other plane, which means you can get into the perfect firing position, behind the opponent.

More important is the "OODA loop" -- which is the envelope for the pilot's thought process.  How quickly can the pilot observe the situation, orient within the situation, decide, and act.  If the pilot's OODA loop time is shorter, the pilot can overcome the slower.

At this point, we're seeing that McCain is completely within the Obama campaign's OODA loop -- they are out-thinking them and out-acting them -- and very problably the McCain campaign has a tighter envelope than the Obama campaign, as well.

Look at the choice of Palin, and the remaining tactics of the last week. It was the week of the Democratic Convention, and while they had their show, he continued to campaign, with immensely effective responses every day (see my day one coverage of Silver Salazar and the Democrats for McCain.) Then, on Thursday, the campaign let it be known that there would be an announcement and ad running that night. 

The talking heads chattered about it -- would it be a challenge? Would he announce his VP choice to step on the speech? 

It got to the point that the Obama campaign said it would be "political malpractice" to announce his VP pick, and that it was more evidence the McCain campaign was a "war room masquerading as a political campaign" --- on the day that Obama was to say in his speech "But what I will not do is suggest that the senator takes his positions for political purposes."  Then the ad comes out ...

... and it's congratulations on Obama's nomination on the anniversary of the "I have a dream" speech.  In one day, they make Obama's campaign look cheap, they make McCain look gracious, and the get the Obama campaign to belie Obama's own speech.

Then the next day, they announce Sarah Palin -- after a dozen head fakes.  It's Romney.  No it's Pawlenty.  It's Romney again. Oh my God, it's Lieberman.  Instead of the days and days of anticipation, followed by anxiety, followed by boredom, followed by even more boredom when Obama picked Biden, we get a real surprise -- and the air is sucked out of Obama's big day.

Now look at what this means to the running criticisms of McCain.

Age?  Palin is young, beautiful, charismatic and strong. What's more, Biden is going to have to be very careful about an attacks in the vice presidential debate; he'll look like a misogynistic jerk, and then Sarah Barracuda will gut him like a trout. Smiling.

Hit too hard, and Hillary PUMAs they managed to attract back with the campaign's show of unity will flee in droves. Besides, the McCain campaign is all over it already. According to Real Clear Politics' Tom Bevan, "McCain senior advisor Nancy Pfotenhauer just said on Fox -- and I'm paraphrasing: I think the Obama campaign would have learned not to belittle women."

Experience?  The Obama campaign has already tried hitting at Palin as inexperienced --- but every time they do so, they open themselves to the obvious retort: she's got more executive experience than Obama, and she's only running for Vice President.  

Foreign policy? Again, she's been to Iraq as often as Obama has -- and she's got a son going there.  Hugh Hewitt rightly points out "by reason of just her work with Canada, she's light years ahead [sic] Obama." The Democratic nominee has had his own problems with Canada in fact.

Corruption and pork? She got into office attacking corruption among Republicans in Alaska and turned down the famous "bridge to nowhere". 

There's one more military concept here, as well: operational security.  Unlike the usual campaign leaks, this really was kept completely quiet -- in fact, they even managed to almost eliminate the usual hints, like aircraft movements.  It was planned and executed like a SEAL op.

All in all, it was masterful.  We just finished the Denver convention, and the self-congratulation last night was thick on the ground.  But this week, it looks like the Obama campaign's "Chicago Rules" have turned out to be bringing a knife to a gunfight.

This column speaks to McCain's excellent decision and execution, which appear to be getting stronger over time.  Things appear to be on track at the moment, at least with the base: fundraising has taken off, and that's a good sign of things to come.  If McCain manages to fully rally his base, it's over for Obama.  The usual post-convention bounce did occur, but it wasn't much: only about 6 points.  Given that the RNC is taking place this week, much of that bounce will likely disappear in short order.  The question that remains to be answered is whether or not McCain will come out ahead after the RNC.  More on that in other posts.

Still, politics is politics, and the attacks keep coming.  It's still too soon to tell how the Bristol smear will pan out, but it seems that the religious Right is taking a more gracious look at things than the Left attack machine was hoping.  Rather than seeing this as a values problem, here's what people are seeing:

Barack Obama: "If my daughters make a mistake, I don't want them punished with a baby."

Palin Family: "[We are] proud of Bristol's decision to have her baby and even prouder to become grandparents.  As Bristol faces the responsibilities of adulthood, she knows she has our unconditional love and support."

Quite the difference, don't you think?

Of the flood of analysis that has come out in the past few days about Palin and what it means for the overall campaign, one of the best (in my opinion) is this from Newt Gingrich:

The great threat to the Obama-Biden ticket can be captured in one word: authenticity.

There is something unaffected and "unsophisticated" (in the Columbia, Princeton, Harvard and University of Chicago meanings of the word) about Governor Palin. She really was point guard of a state championship basketball team. She really is a competent hunter. She is a hockey mom. She has one son about to go to Iraq.

She has 13 years in elected office

By any practical standard she has done far more in the real world with much more spontaneity and practicality than Barack Obama. And there is something deeply real and courageous about John McCain ignoring most of his advisers and all of the "insider wisdom" to reach out to a younger woman whose greatest characteristic is undaunted courage and a willingness to clean out the corruption in her own party.

This is a moment of stunning authenticity versus a sad collapse on the part of the Obama campaign from " change you can count on" to politics as usual, as marked by Obama's choice of a senator first elected when Palin was 9 years old.

As I wandered around from a family restaurant to the dry cleaners to a variety of other non-political places, people kept walking up to me and talking with energy and enthusiasm about their reaction to McCain's choice of Governor Palin. As I sifted through their emotions and the intensity of their reaction it hit me that they were responding to "the real thing." The power of Palin is that she is so out of the establishment, and so out of the talking-heads, inside-the –Beltway-elite mindset, that the 80 per cent of Americans who believe we are on the wrong track suddenly can identify with someone who isn't part of what got us on that track.

Palin will make mistakes. The news media and the Obama researchers will find things to attack. But if she stays relaxed and continues to be authentically who she has been for 44 years, the country is going to love her, and they are very rapidly going to get disgusted with the cynical negative nastiness of politics as usual.

Finally 2008 really has given us "change we can count on." Ironically, it is the McCain-Palin ticket.

I think Gingrich hits it on the head with these words.

I'll post more on Palin and her background over the coming days, but here's the short version.  Palin is an outsider, from a state not normally associated with presidential politics; she can genuinely be part of the solution because she wasn't part of the problem.  She's willing to take on corruption wherever she finds it, even if that means her own party.  She's from a small town, so she can identify with the rural areas of the country.  Women love her for being not only a woman, but a strong and competent woman with a healthy family and core values.  Men love her for hunting moose, riding snowmobiles, and shooting guns (and yes, for the more shallow, simply because she's pretty).  She knows energy and oil, she loves the outdoors (i.e. environmental arguments don't stick), and she has legitimate executive experience.

Her authenticity on many levels is almost tangible.

While still risky, she was a brilliant pick, and a definite threat to the Obamessiah campaign.  Let the games begin!

There's my two cents.