Why the OODA Loop Won’t Work in Virginia Politics

Sometimes there come moments of clarity, especially when reading…

 Among the many books I am reading is Boyd: The Fighter Pilot Who Changed the Art of War. The late John Boyd was an Air Force fighter pilot who moved from being a crack pilot to being on the cutting edge of military purchasing reform to becoming a lead advocate in manuver warfare.

Boyd offered many presentations and briefings in his search for the origins of creativity and how that capability can best be translated to military operations. He ultimately created a model called the OODA Loop (Observe, Orient, Decide, Act)…

…which represents a continuing cycle of decision making.  This concept has been put into effect by the Marine Corps as part of their basic combat methodology, and has been adapted by many corporations as a management model.

As I read this, I thought how this would fit perfectly into the sturm and drang of a political campaign.  In fact, one could say the entire Macaca incident of the 2006 campaign and the manner in which the Webb campaign took advantage of the gaffe, and then followed up as the Allen campaign stumbled, was the OODA loop in action.

There is some irony in this.  John Boyd had a group of six “Acolytes” who carried his methodolgy into the fields of purchasing, weapons planning, and manuver theory.  One of these six was retired Marine Corps Colonel Michael Wyly, who spearheaded bringing manuver warfare to the Corps. Wyly was a company comander in Vietnam and turned a unit that suffered high casualties into one of the crack combat forces in Southeast Asia. A young lieutenant under his command later wrote a novel about his experiences in Vietnam, and wrote glowingly of his commander. Years later, that Wyly in turn a different kind of epistle about his lieutenant…when he endorsed his former lieutenant for the US Senate.

As you may have guessed, the young lieutenant was James Webb, Jr….creating a different kind of loop!

Yes, the OODA loop, having already been applied successfully in other areas, has to be effective in politics!

Then it occured to me that there was something missing…

You see, the goal of a military operation is pretty clear-protect  your country from those who seek to harm it.  Business’s are out to make a profit.  However, political parties are not out to simply win elections.  To survive and flourish, political parties have to win elections by standing for something.  Parties that are out only to win elections go, or are out of touch with the populace, die out like the Whigs and the Populists and the No-Nothings.  Before you can successfully apply the OODA loop concept to politics, you have to have political parties that are willing to stand for something…and nowadays we don’t have it.

We have seen it at work in Virginia in the realm of transportation, as noted in previous posts.  Parties are more interested in winning than in standing for something…the whole discussion becomes a nah-nah finger pointing exercise rather than a discussion of policy and the body of politics.

I reckon the OODA Loop still works as a tactical tool-as seen in Macaca.  But I don’t guess it can work from a strategic perspective.  It seems that certain absolutes or at least assumptions must be in place.  In combat, one assumes the other side has weapons loaded.  In business, one is aware of certain market fluctuations or conditions and make sure to deal with them. When the parties don’t have a defined image, when the people cannot readily tell you what each party stands for, then the ground you are fighting becomes more problematic, and a different construct is needed.

And here I thought normal rules and concepts could easily be applied to Virginai politics…how silly of me!