In a Report today, Fox News White House correspondent Major Garrett observed, "Sarah Palin remains... somewhat of an obsession to the Obama White House." And over at CNN, producer Peter Hamby tweeted, "Gibbs probably revealed that the White House thinks about Palin a little more than they like to let on." (h/t: Tommy Report)
Another way of evaluating this obsession the Obama administration has with Sarah Palin is in the strategic sense of a fighter pilot, who would say that Gov. Palin is "inside Obama's OODA Loop." The term, from the acronym for Observe, Orient, Decide and Act, is a concept from the mind of the late USAF Col. John Boyd, a former fighter pilot who wrote the first manual on jet aerial combat. Although the OODA model was originally developed for military purposes, elements of the same theory can also be applied to business strategy, law enforcement and -- yes -- to politics.
In political wars, execution of the OODA cycle can allow one to get inside the mind and decision cycle of the adversary. Boyd was influenced bythe writings of Sun Tzu, who wrote The Art of War 2,500 years ago:
"If you know yourself and know your enemy in a hundred battles you will not be in peril, If you know yourself and not your enemy for every battle won you will suffer a defeat, If you know neither yourself nor your enemy in every battle you will be in peril."Boyd's strategy holds that an enemy can be defeated strategically by psychological paralysis. He emphasized that strategy should always revolve around changing the enemy’s behavior, not annihilating his forces. Both Boyd and Sun Tzu advocated the ideas of harmony, deception, swiftness and fluidity of action, surprise, shock, and attacking the enemy’s strategy. If the enemy perceives the wrong threats or misunderstands what is happening in the environment around him, then he will orient his thinking (and assets) in the wrong directions and ultimately make incorrect decisions.
In the August of 2008, there was some speculation by Michael Barone and others that McCain, the old Navy fighter pilot, was pursuing an OODA strategy against Obama. But other than the selection of Sarah Palin as his running mate, McCain never showed that he grasped the concept, at least as how it is applied to politics. Gov. Palin, on the other hand, seems to at least instinctively understand both the Boyd and the Sun Tzu way of taking the battle to one's opponents. She certainly knows her enemy.
So what we are seeing here is Sarah Palin's Sun Tzu and John Boyd versus Obama's Saul Alinsky. Sarah's strategic mentors are winning. Everything the White House does is a reaction to a Sarah Palin action. She is right inside their minds and inside their loop. She acts in ways they don't understand, and by the time they react, she has already confounded them again.
When Sarah Palin wrote some topics on her hand, she did nothing less than millions of ordinary Americans have done at one time or another. The reaction of the White House was to follow Alinsky and ridicule her. But they don't understand that when they ridicule Sarah Palin, they are ridiculing those millions of ordinary Americans at the same time. From inside the administration's OODA loop, Gov. Palin is making not just the White House, but all of Obama's other support troops behave in a predictable manner -- one which is perceived as elitist and frowned upon by the great majority of real folks. It only serves to widen the gap between those who occupy the seat of power and those who disapprove of the way they wield it.
- JP
