The Tactician and the Strategist

I found it so interesting that Barack Obama and John McCain, in their first debate, had an argument over who understood tactics and who understood strategy. McCain said of Obama,

“I’m afraid Senator Obama doesn’t understand the difference between a tactic and a strategy…. And this strategy [the surge], and this general, they are winning…. There is social, economic progress, and a strategy of going into an area, clearing and holding, and the people of the county become allied with you…. That’s what’s happening in Iraq and it wasn’t a tactic.”

Obama retorts

“…I absolutely understand the difference between tactics and strategy. And the strategic question that the president has to ask is not whether or not we are employing a particular approach in the country once we have made the decision to be there. The question is, was this wise?”

McCain is actually wrong on this, as Joe Klein also noted,

As for McCain's remark about Obama not knowing the difference between a tactic and a strategy—McCain was wrong. The counterinsurgency methods introduced by David Petraeus in Iraq were a tactical change, a new means to achieve Bush's same strategic end of a stable, unified Iraq. If Bush had decided to partition the country, or to withdraw, that would have been a change in strategy.

The implementation of the surge is a change in tactics. Yes, General Patreus does have to think strategically about Iraq but the surge is a shift in tactics within a larger strategy for Iraq. On the next level, CENTCOM, which by the way Patreus is now taking over, has to think on the regional level and the President has to think even larger–on the global scale. As Obama said in the debate,

… Over the last eight years, this administration, along with Senator McCain, have been solely focused on Iraq. That has been their priority. That has been where all our resources have gone.

In the meantime, bin Laden is still out there. He is not captured. He is not killed. Al Qaida is resurgent.

In the meantime, we've got challenges, for example, with China, where we are borrowing billions of dollars. They now hold a trillion dollars' worth of our debt. And they are active in countries like -- in regions like Latin America, and Asia, and Africa. They are -- the conspicuousness of their presence is only matched by our absence, because we've been focused on Iraq…. What we are talking about is recognizing that the next president has to have a broader strategic vision about all the challenges that we face.

Now, that is the type of strategic thinking I would like in a president.

McCain has demonstrated throughout this campaign, that he is a tactical thinker not a strategic one, a Navy fighter pilot not an admiral (see my previous post). His campaign wages its battles day to day—win a news cycle here and there no matter what it takes (see selection of Sarah Palin, suspension of convention, suspension of campaign, threat to skip debates etc.) Obama, on the other hand, has shown himself to be a strategic campaigner. He was able to beat Hillary Clinton only because he had 50 state strategy to win both caucuses and primaries.

This distinction of tactician vs. strategist also becomes clear when you examine the different approaches they took in the debate. For McCain, it was important to win every argument, to get that last condescending jab in. In fact, I was infuriated with Obama for much of the debate for repeating “I agree with John McCain,” “John is absolutely right” and not responding aggressively to McCain’s personal attacks “Obama is naïve, doesn’t understand etc.” On a tactical level, McCain shone, until you realize that, strategically, the Obama campaign had realized that the current issue of the campaign is McCain’s temperament. Can he be portrayed as the vicious, cranky old guy rather than bipartisan leader he claims he is? Secondly, the Obama campaign realized that this election is going to be decided by Independent voters and women. Independent voters tend not to like the personal negative attacks and women (I hope this isn’t sexist) tend to like consensus builders. For Obama, then, it was more important to fulfill the strategic goal of bringing in those voting bloc rather than making his committed supporters feel good about the verbal blows he landed. Political Rope-a-dope, you might say.

America’s choice is clear, McCain the master tactician or Obama the ultimate strategist.

Maverick in the Cockpit? Hold on for Dear Life

John McCain is regularly and justifiably presented as a national hero for the years he spent in a POW camp after having being shot down as a fighter pilot in the Vietnam War. Much of that appeal, of course, taps into the mythical American image of the maverick cowboy who rides into town, accepts the sheriff's badge, chases the bad guys out of town, and rides into the sunset, preferably with the beautiful woman.

This archetypal American hero re-emerges in the movie classic Top Gun as the fighter pilot Pete "Maverick" Mitchell a.k.a. Tom Cruise. What young boy hasn't, at some point, pretend to be a cowboy or a fighter pilot. It's hard not to think here of our man George W. who, early on in his presidency, tried to convince us that he was a bonafide cowboy while clearing brush on his Crawford ranch or that he was a manly fighter pilot landing on an aircraft carrier to declare "Mission accomplished" in Iraq.



Well, if W. was playing fighter pilot, McCain was really a fighter pilot and in the past few weeks, America has gotten a foretaste of what it would be like to have a "maverick" in charge. Let me tell you, it involves lots of lurches and tonnes of bombs. Who can forget what a bombshell the selection of Sarah Palin was? Or the surprise suspension of the Republican Convention as Hurricane Gustav approached and its resumption in the most virulently partisan tone days later. Or how McCain one day was convinced the fundamentals of the economy were sound and the next was calling for the firing of the SEC chairman.

And now this, with 40 days to the election, McCain claims he is suspending his campaign (as though such a thing were even possible) and calls for the cancellation of the Presidential Debate 18 months in the making. Today at the Clinton Global Initiative, McCain quipped, “I'm an old Navy pilot, and I know when a crisis calls for all hands on deck." Again, both his allies and adversaries were caught entirely off-guard. General Wesley Clark, a few months back, got a lot of flack for suggesting that being a fighter pilot involves a different set of decision-making attributes than say an admiral. Trust me, the Navy does not hand over its nuclear-powered aircraft carriers to its fighter pilots for safe-keeping. You make a different set of decisions with 5,000 men under your care than when you're flying solo.

What we have seen in McCain's process is an extremely unpredictable leadership style that leaves the rest of the team trying to figure out what exactly is going on. Guess what? Great attributes in a dogfight, unsettling as a world leader (just ask the North Koreans). In fact, the moral of Top Gun is that the maverick endangers his team. I sure as hell don't want to wake up one morning to find out we went to war with Russia while I was sleeping.

America couldn't have a clearer set of options in selecting its next president. NPR has a piece on Obama's temperament and another on McCain's. I, for one, need to rent Top Gun again to get away from all the excitement.


Update I: To summarize, a fighter pilot is a tactician, an admiral is a strategist. Obama is a strategic thinker, McCain is all tactics all the time.

Swinging Pendelums and Cuckoo Clocks

In a recent discussion with a good friend, he wondered aloud if McCain and Obama were not simply flip sides of the same coin. In other words, could either of them really offer deep structural change? Who really believes that lobbyists are going to disappear from Washington and corporate interests will no longer hold sway over congress? What is this if not a nation of special interests? That, I'm afraid, is the nature of the beast in Washington. My friend further suggested that only Ron Paul was proposing real systemic change (note to self, pay more attention to Ron Paul). I find that, in many ways, my amigo is right. More than a few commentators have, in fact, observed that for all the talk of post-partisanship, both candidates have descended into conventionally Democratic and Republic stances. So the question is are we really going to get change with either Obama or McCain?

If my friend is right, and I am afraid he is, the new world order is going to look surprisingly like the old one and there are going to be many disappointed idealists. There is, however, a reason for this systemic resistance to change: the system is rigged to prevent rapid change in order to maintain institutional stability (or sluggishness as you may see it). The founding fathers realized that not all bright ideas turn out to be great ideas after all. Privatized social security anyone?

The advantage of the American system has been that the institution is stronger than the individual. Furthermore, the binary party system, which has resisted intrusion from third parties, is set up to accept change insofar as it is the swing of a pendulum back and forth. When the pendulum swings too far in one direction, the American people can, if they are so inclined, push it back in the other direction. See the regulation or deregulation of markets for instance.

The question for the American people is whether they want to swing the direction of the pendulum or they are asking for a new watchmaker. Ron Paul and some of his less successful counterparts certainly propose rebuilding the clock but what if they break it? The polls so far suggest that the American people want change as long as it isn't accompanied by instability: evolution not revolution. Sorry Ron Paul.

By the way, do not be confused by John McCain's presence in this election; the pendulum swing that an Obama candidacy exists to counter is the Bush administration's not John McCain's (hence Obama's attempts to declare McCain as the 3rd Bush term). McCain is sort of the cuckoo that pops out and distracts you from noticing the swinging pendulum. While fair-minded observers will credit McCain as a politician who is willing to strike it out on his own (hence the maverick label), he still has to drag the right-wing base of the Republican party along with him--witness the Republic convention and the selection of Sarah Palin.

So while Obama appears to be competing against McCain, you can only truly understand his emergence and the passion of his supporters if you see him as the anti-Bush, the pendulum swing in the other direction. For every undesirable Bush trait, he seems to offer a corrective. Where Bush appeared to make decisions impulsively and speak in simple anemic sentences, Obama appears to weigh every utterance considerably and speak in thoughtful paragraphs (an asset that is likely to be a liability in the debates). While Bush operates on the global scene like a cowboy on his ranch, Obama seems to see the global community as faculty lounge where all can be reasoned with. For Bush, the constitution is an inconvenience to be maneuvered around, while for Obama it has been object of study as a constitutional lawyer.



Obama could only happen in American politics because Bush happened in American governance. Just as Bush's mindset and worldview brought its consequences, so will Obama's modus operandi, some good, some bad. The only real question is has the pendulum swung far enough to the right for change.

The Coming Surprise

It's become quite clear, based on emerging news reports, that the Bush Administration is determined to find Osama bin Laden before the November elections (footnote: isn't it ironic that Osama bin Laden sounds phonetically like Obama n' Biden, give or take a few consonants?). It's been revealed that ground troops, specifically Navy SEALs, have been making incursions into Pakistan and the unmanned Predator strikes have increased.

Why the renewed urgency after 7 years in power? On one hand, it is fair to assume, as Sheryl Gay Stolberg does, that Bush is seeking to salvage his legacy. On the other hand, it is quite clear that Bin Laden's capture will be a net positive for Senator McCain's campaign. I am convinced that the Administration is going to try to use this as a game-changer. If my hypothesis seems far-fetched, anyone recall the serendipitous timing of the raid to rescue Ingrid Betancourt and McCain's visit to Colombia a few months ago? (A great story considering McCain was himself a POW for about the same length of time as Betancourt). Watch screenwriter and commenetator John Ridley speaking to this point on Morning Joe in July.



The Obama campaign would be well-advised to be prepared to go on offense immediately Osama bin Laden is captured so that the Republicans don't use it to their advantage. His capture should be used to reinforce the simple point that if we had focused on going after Osama rather than being diverted to Iraq, we would have made much more progress in the "war on terror."

Update I: See NPR story along these lines here.

Why John Stewart is One of My Heroes

Republicans are Officially Insane ... and Democrats are Wimps

Are you kidding me? The party that brought us Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib, Katrina and "Heck of a job Brownie" is trying to get away with it? The party that brought us a dumb war in Iraq and claimed Saddam Hussein planned 9-11 is trying to hand over to themselves? A Republican Administration takes a dump on the constitution, tortures people, taps Americans' phones and yet this election is about whether Barack and Michelle Obama are American enough? About whether or not Barack is wearing a flag pin? About so-called values?

Enough of this rubbish!

Look at the morons on stage at yesterday's Republican Convention. Rudy Giuliani, whose whole strategy for winning what he must have thought was the presidency of Florida was repeating a noun, a verb and 9-11. He forgot to tell his value voters about his three divorces, his marriage to his cousin, his support for abortion rights, and the time he spent with a gay roommate after being kicked out of the state house by his ex-wife.

Mitt Romney. I quote conservative commentator David Brooks , "Mitt Romney's speech was insane." Here's the man who, as governor of Massachusetts, implemented state-wide health care now standing on the stage bashing liberals. Only, he forgot to mention that as governor of Massachusetts, he was pro-choice. Here are some direct quotes from his speech:

We need change all right — change from a liberal Washington to a conservative Washington! We have a prescription for every American who wants change in Washington — throw out the big government liberals and elect John McCain!

Except we won't be throwing out a "liberal" administration but George Bush and Dick Cheney! Not only that, the congress has been in Republican hands for 6 out of the last 8 years! This, a government that received record surplus from Bill Clinton and will be passing on a record deficit, two wars, a weakened dollar and record foreclosures to the next administration. Romney continues,

It's time for the party of big ideas, not the party of Big Brother!

Brought to you by the party that wants to spy on you, decide for you whether or not you should have a Down-syndrome baby, and send your sons and daughters off to war on false pretenses.

And at Saddleback, after Barack Obama dodged and ducked every direct question, John McCain hit the nail on the head: radical violent Islam is evil, and he will defeat it!

Can I just say, my dear Mitt Romney, that the men who killed the founder of your religion and forced Mormons to migrate to Utah were convinced they were confronting evil. As Obama said in the aforementioned Saddleback Forum, "... it is important for us to have some humility in how we approach the issue of confronting evil, but you know a lot of evil has been perpetrated based on the claim that we are confronting evil."

And then, our dear Sarah Palin. I have not the words. The least the Republicans could have done is try not to mock us by presenting another candidate who could not pronounce "nuclear." I won't say anything about her family but let me just say we've seen the result of her abstinence-only program and her reduction of funds supporting teenage mothers.

You know, if the Democrats can't win this one, then they don't deserve to. They need to stop cowering in a corner, stop playing defense, and start presenting their own values aggressively.

Update I: Here's a shout out to the ladies of Code Pink who interrupted McCain's speech.
Update II: NY Times has an article about the Republicans running like they weren't in power.
Update III: McCain on the Republican ticket? Lipstick on a pig. I think he's a great guy, I genuinely admire him and listening to the guy's speech this evening, I was like, "I could live with him in the Oval Office." Luckily for me, I had tuned in to the speeches that came before so I know what party he's dragging along with him to the White House. By the way, the Republican Party didn't think he was such a hero in 2000, did they? Thanks, but no thanks. "Drill here, Drill now!"

Politicizing the Family

With news about Sarah Palin's teenage daughter's pregnancy breaking over the Labor Day weekend, the McCain campaign and the Obama campaign have angrily protested against any politicization of the issue. This has been demarcated as a private family matter that should not be politicized. That all sounds great and noble except that many on the right are using this incident to portray how much of a pro-lifer Sarah Palin is because her daughter is keeping the baby. With all due respect, that is using the daughter's situation to make a political point. (To be clear, I think keeping the baby is exactly the right decision).

My second point is that public policy, such as sex-education policies, are important precisely because they affect private lives.

Lastly, McCain operative and Karl Rove protege Steve Schmidt warned the media about Bristol Palin's pregnancy, "It's a private family matter. Life happens in families." Well if "life happens," shouldn't public policy accommodate "life happening" rather than trying to force life into ideological straight-jackets and make no allowance for those to whom life happens? To that point, I cite Senator Obama from his "Call to Renewal" speech.

Politics depends on our ability to persuade each other of common aims based on a common reality. It involves the compromise, the art of what's possible. At some fundamental level, religion does not allow for compromise. It's the art of the impossible. If God has spoken, then followers are expected to live up to God's edicts, regardless of the consequences. To base one's life on such uncompromising commitments may be sublime, but to base our policy making on such commitments would be a dangerous thing.