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.