How to Defeat Obama: A Grand Strategy

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.