Is Obama’s reelection inevitable? Is the Republican
rallying cry of making Obama a “one-term” President a fading pipedream?
Democrats are certainly beginning to feel
invincible, and many Republicans are cowering in the face of the inevitability
narrative.
Conservative stalwart George
Will even wrote a column tacitly arguing that Republicans
should cede the White House to Obama,
and focus the bulk of GOP resources on retaining the House and wining the
Senate.
Republican prospects are so dim, that they shouldn’t
pull out all the stops to compete for
the Presidency?
The Republican grassroots aren’t much more
optimistic. The anti-Romney bloc thinks Romney is Obama-light, and therefore a
terribly weak general election candidate, akin to a Bob Dole or John McCain.
The pro-Romney bloc thinks Romney is the strongest
candidate to face Obama in the fall, but that the anti-Romney bloc is dragging
their guy down, ultimately crippling Republican chances of beating Obama.
The primary fight has been at times ugly, and unlike
the Obama v. Clinton contest, all Republican candidates are seeing their
approval ratings drop.
Few people in the Republican Party and the broader
conservative movement are glistening with optimism these days--a dramatic
turnaround from just a few months ago, when a bruised Obama looked highly
vulnerable.
This gloomy outlook among many Republicans and
cheerful optimism among Democrats and their allies in the liberal media is
grossly misguided. To paraphrase Mark Twain, reports of Republican defeat in
November have been greatly exaggerated.
Beneath the veneer of a gradually declining
unemployment rate, the death of Bin Laden, the bullish stock market, the
General Motors “comeback,” and the counterproductive Republican slugfest, President
Obama is an eminently weak candidate, who can and should be defeated. But he
can only be defeated if Republicans eschew an ad-hoc, tactical campaign and
embrace a Grand Strategy.
As every military history buff appreciates,
history’s greatest military captains, from Alexander the Great to General David
Petraeus, always plan their campaigns around a grand strategy.
Military historian B. H. Liddell Hart says that the role of grand strategy is to “co-ordinate and
direct all the resources of a nation, or band of nations, towards the
attainment of the political object of the war – the goal defined by fundamental
policy.”
Applying this ageless military principal to a political campaign means that Republicans must pursue their ultimate objective of defeating Obama not by repeating uncoordinated talking points about whatever issue pollsters tell them Americans care about at the moment, but by isolating the President’s Center of Gravity (COG) and concentrating all resources to undermining and eventually destroying it.
Conventional inside-the-Beltway wisdom maintains that the 2012 election will be about the economy and jobs. Democrat and Republican strategists concede this point. As of January 2012, when the economy was weak and job growth anemic, Republicans were salivating at the prospect of running against a President presiding over poor economic conditions.
A major reason why Republican hopes have deflated is because the unemployment rate has since been gradually falling, which always helps an incumbent President. And if you’re going to bet your election hopes on a high unemployment rate, then you have to take the good with the bad.
Herein lies the rub of making the unemployment rate or any single issue the central theme of a campaign. Republicans do this at the peril of formulating and executing a grand strategy--the only strategy that can beat Obama.
The economy has been the dominant theme in the Republican primary. The straightforward message is that Barack Obama has failed to turn the economy around and it’s time for a change.
From a historical perspective, this is ostensibly a
sound strategy. Ronald Reagan sealed his victory over Jimmy Carter by asking
Americans if they were better off now than they were four years ago. This
shrewd rhetorical tactic underscored Jimmy Carter’s poor stewardship of the
economy, which became his undoing.
In 1992, Bill Clinton’s chief strategist James
Carville coined the phrase “It’s the economy stupid.” Carville’s strategy was
to make the economy the central issue of the campaign. George H. W. Bush’s high
approval ratings were largely linked to his skillful handling of the Gulf War.
Americans saw Bush as a strong leader and an excellent Commander in Chief.
Carville recognized that Bush’s main strength was
impenetrable: Clinton had no chance of convincing Americans that he would be a
better Commander in Chief. Carville instead focused on Bush’s glaring
vulnerability: an economy headed into a recession. The strategy was to concentrate
all of Clinton’s resources (advertising dollars, speeches, newsletters, and so
on) against the point of Bush’s biggest weakness, the struggling economy. Stay
disciplined, stay on message. It’s not national security, it’s not Iraq. It’s
the economy, stupid.
Should Republicans then adopt a similar strategy
used by these winning campaigns? After all, the economy is still weak by
historical standards despite recent improvements, and polls still show that
Americans disapprove of Obama’s handling of the economy. Didn’t similar
conditions lead to the defeat of Carter and Bush?
Republicans are eager to follow this model, but it
is a potentially catastrophic strategy. Making the economy the dominant theme
this early in the campaign is a strategic blunder, defying the fundamental laws
of grand strategy.
To use the phrase popularized by Secretary of
Defense Donald Rumsfeld, the state of the economy in the fall of 2012 is a known
unknown. While we know that the economy will influence the outcome of the
election, we do not know what the economy will look like.
If the economy continues to struggle, with the
unemployment rate at or above 8%, then the economy would presumably be a powerful
Republican theme. However, if the economy steadily improves and unemployment
falls below 8%, then the economy will no longer be a potent weapon. (It won’t
matter that the fundamentals of our economy, under assault by a crippling debt
and regulations, will still be weak. The only thing that matters in politics is
what the voters can see vividly, which is the unemployment rate and monthly job
growth.) More critically, if the economy is no longer seen as a major weakness
for Obama, Republicans would find themselves entrenched in a completely
untenable position, since their main weapon--the unemployment rate talking
point-- would be rendered impotent.
Entrenching yourself in a position poses potentially
fatal risks. The entrenched position is effective only if it’s a strong
position from which you can hit the right target. But in politics as in war,
strength is conditional. If the target you’re hitting is no longer tied to your
central objective, then attacking it is pointless. And since you’re entrenched,
it becomes difficult to maneuver to hit the new target. In short, when
conditions change, an entrenched position becomes wholly worthless from the
standpoint of attack and extremely dangerous from the standpoint of defense.
Defense, because your static position makes YOU an easy target.
By making jobs and the economy the definitive issue
of the campaign--i.e. digging into an entrenched position--you open yourself up
to attack if jobs and the economy suddenly morph into a strength for Obama. If
the election were held tomorrow, next week, or next month, the economy would
perhaps be the most effective weapon for Republicans to deploy. The economy is
currently Obama’s biggest weakness. But if conditions on the ground change and
the economy improves, everything Republicans are doing now will backfire.
The far superior strategy--the grand strategy -- is
to seize the central position and attack Obama’s center of gravity, NOT his
weakness du jour.
The primary advantage of the central position is
ease of maneuver. Unlike an entrenched position, which severely restricts how
and where you can attack, while making you vulnerable to a potentially fatal
counterattack, a central position allows you to attack on any number of fronts,
whether it’s the economy, jobs, Iran, social security, electric car companies,
or any other issue.
In the political context, seizing the central
position means embracing big themes, not narrow issue items like jobs, or gas
prices. And that’s really the essence of grand strategy: seeing the big
picture, the ultimate goal, not seeking a temporary tactical advantage. Many Democrats
feel invincible because the economy is improving. Republicans are in the dumps
because Republican candidates are getting bruised by the media, by Democrats,
and by each other. This feeling of helplessness and despair is a symptom of
entrenched warfare, which is precisely the kind of war Republicans are waging
to the Party’s and the country’s detriment.
To get out of the trench, to seize the central
position, and to effectively execute a grand strategy, Republicans will need to
embrace the three big themes of this campaign: Obama’s leadership, broken
promises made in 2008, and Obama’s goal to fundamentally transform America. The
three themes represent Obama’s COG. Exploit them fully, and Obama will be
easily defeated.
Broken
Promises
President Obama inspired a generation of Americans
by promising to change Washington and to be a post-partisan President. His
failure in this regard is so glaring, that even his staunchest supporters
cannot say with a straight face that he has succeeded. They may disingenuously
blame Republicans for Obama’s failure to change Washington, but that won’t work.
Obama’s blame game reeks of desperation and is quickly losing credibility. The
only thing that will matter to the electorate is that President Obama failed to
achieve one of the central objectives of his 2008 campaign. By highlighting
this failure over and over again, Republicans weaken Obama’s COG.
Leadership
Barack Obama’s incessant complaining about how tough
he has it and his laughable insistence on blaming George Bush and Congressional
Republicans for all his problems belie the qualities typically associates with
strong leadership. Couple that with one of his advisers actually using the
phrase “leading from behind” to characterize the Obama Administration’s Libya
strategy, and what emerges is a textbook weak leader.
Leadership is central to the COG of all Presidents,
and persuading voters that Obama is a weak leader will do irreparable damage to
his reputation.
Leftwing
Transformational Change
President Obama placed one-sixth of the U.S. economy
under federal control via Obamacare, increased the national debt by $5
trillion, refuses to reform insolvent entitlement programs (this point is also
tied to leadership), and severely hurt business vibrancy by pushing for an
unprecedented number of onerous regulations. In other words, the President is
committed to transforming the American economy in fundamental ways that are
antithetical to our republic’s founding ideals.
America is a center-right country. The majority of
voters would never support a far-leftwing President. Define Obama as seeking to implement
left-of-center transformational change, and you cripple his image.
These three themes are powerful weapons and are
wholly independent of where the economy is this fall or what the price of gas
is.
Obama’s center of gravity is the source of his
strength. Irrespective of economic fluctuations, if you destroy his COG, you
destroy him. Conversely, if Republicans focus on a single issue or even a
series of issues, they will be vulnerable to the whims of changing conditions
that are beyond their control.
As gas prices skyrocket, Republicans are once again
falling into a trap by concentrating too much energy and too many resources on
this one narrow and transient issue. The high price of gas is Obama’s major
weakness today, but what happens if
gas prices plummet in the fall as they have historically? It is entirely
possible that gas falls to $2.50 a gallon (Newt Gingrich’s barometer) by the
time the election rolls around. Having committed excessive political capitol to
the point that they become entrenched on the issue of gas prices, Republicans
will be vulnerable to an unrelenting counterattack.
To defeat Obama, Republicans will have to adopt a
grand strategy that foregoes ad hoc tactical attacks. Applying the ageless
principles of war, the Republican nominee will have to:
·
Occupy the central position, making it
possible to launch attacks on multiple fronts, forcing Obama to defend
everywhere (Note Frederick the Great’s Maxim’s that he who defends everything,
defends nothing)
·
Not get trapped by overplaying a
temporary strength that may become a weakness. Conditions can change, and new
circumstances can open you up to attack. To that end, stress maneuverability
and flexibility over rigidness and entrenchment.
Conventional political wisdom says to stay on
message at all costs. This advice oversimplifies and belies the strategic
imperative of flexibility.
If the message is a consistent winner, staying on a
winning message is clearly sound advice. But a fixed message that defines the
race too early risks becoming a fatal weakness when conditions change. A
central position symbolized by adopting the three major themes is more
important than a fixed message, especially during the early stages of a
campaign. Don’t trap yourself in a position that’s difficult to escape. From a
central position, you could launch the major attack on the economy or the jobs
front if that is STILL Obama’s biggest weakness. But if other issues take
precedence, you could quickly pivot and attack Obama on foreign policy, on
Obamacare, and so on, without seeming to go “off message.” His leadership and
radicalism are the overarching problems; his mishandling of any one issue is
merely a symptom of poor leadership and radicalism.
Just as it is highly desirable to undermine your
opponent’s center of gravity, it is equally important to ensure that the
opponent does not destroy your center of gravity. By having a fixed, inflexible
message or position, you expose you COG and open yourself up to attack. On the
other hand, if your COG is grounded in broader themes like leadership, it makes
it difficult for the opponent to target your COG. You appear to be everywhere
at once, mercurial.
President Obama does not deserve reelection. As his
critics correctly point out, his policies have put the U.S. on a path of debt
and decline. What’s more, he has failed to live up to the high expectations he
set in 2008, including his pledge to change the culture of Washington. Couple these failures with his poor track
record of leadership, and you have a one-term President in the making.
If the Republicans adopt a grand strategy by
embracing these large themes and seizing the central position, President Obama
will be defeated.
