The group of voters that needed a bigger reason to vote for you are seniors and middle aged white men. Perhaps, some within the top echelon of your campaign advised you strategically to run the clock and allow Romney to self destruct. It was a fail. You all underestimated a desperate individual. By the time the first debate rolled around, Romney was already wounded, battered, and desperate for a lifesaver. Your team, by improperly feeling the mood of the country gave him one.
From Alhabe to President Barack Obama
The focus of this paper is the art and science of strategic decision making: the act of deciding itself. I am going to shine a light on the process by which decisions are made, rather than the analysis that sits behind the decisions. I shall argue shortly that there are a series of traps that people fall into, that lead to incorrect judgments being reached, whatever the quality of the preceding analysis. The incidence of this is high. The cost, given that these are strategic decisions, is commensurately large. We are all living witnesses to the strategic error that you made during the last debate. By ignoring Romney’s many lies, you have played into the republican narrative that seeks to define you negatively. You also came across as indifferent and unprepared. Those of us that have followed your career over the last seven years knew that this was not the truth. But here lies the problem, we weren’t supposed to be your target audience, we are your natural constituency. At the very least, a reassurance is all we needed.
The group of voters that needed a bigger reason to vote for you are seniors and middle aged white men. Perhaps, some within the top echelon of your campaign advised you strategically to run the clock and allow Romney to self destruct. It was a fail. You all underestimated a desperate individual. By the time the first debate rolled around, Romney was already wounded, battered, and desperate for a lifesaver. Your team, by improperly feeling the mood of the country gave him one. At this point, save for Vice President Biden's performance on Thursday, I understand the democratic base is disillusioned and panicky. There is no need for that. As I will explain shortly, Mitt Romney is the most ideologically bankrupt republican nominee in a generation. Richard Nixon lost to Jack Kennedy, Gerald Ford to Jimmy Carter, George H.W. Bush to William Jefferson Clinton and Bob Dole to William Jefferson Clinton. The one common trend among all of these men is that they are true to their republican ideology. However wrong they may be. Romney on the other hand, is not a true believer in anything, party or otherwise. The only allegiance Romney has is to Romney Inc. and the evidence abounds in his life story. Calling him out on it is not disrespectful or rude. It is the truth and the American people deserve to know the truth. While I will concede that Romney is a boss in the business kind of way, Romney is not a leader, never was and lacks the empathy that is needed to be one. The choice in this election is clear, it is between a guy that will worry about both the affluent and the not so affluent in our society and a guy that worries only about himself. The scripture teaches us that in order to create a just and prosperous world, we ought to be our brother’s keeper.
Democrats make the mistake repeatedly of referring to Romney as caring for only the affluent in our society. No, he doesn’t. He spent according to him 25 years in the private sector creating wealth in a dubious manner for him and his cronies alone. A lot of people, some of whom are affluent, lost out in many a deal with him. That is not the character of an individual that cares about a significant percentage of the people. It is important for Mr. President to point out that Romney does not care about 99% of the people. It is neither rude nor impolite for you to tell him that his life story points to a life of entitlement and a lack of personal responsibility.
Mr. President, my qualification to talk about this subject and advise you on this matter is that in over twenty years in strategy, I have been party and witness to many decisions about important and difficult strategic issues and I have come to appreciate at least some of the subtle ways that subvert and undermine the decision process unintentionally and lead to wrong conclusions. The way to beat Romney effectively is to tell in unambiguous terms the American people who Mitt Romney really is. Three strategies are necessary here: Reassure the base, Consolidate your position with the independents and do not, I repeat do not Equivocate. If you do this, you will comfortably win Ohio, North Carolina, Virginia, Colorado, and Pennsylvania. These five states are going to be the ones to decide this election. You can if you have some money to play with, give Romney a serious run for his money in Arizona and Indiana.
You do not have to win these two states but the fundamentals are there to divert Romney’s resources from the other five states. It is important that going forward you guard against decision making biases, the type that is common amongst pragmatic individuals like you. Pragmatic individuals like to make decisions based on facts - nothing wrong there. However, there is a problem - we cannot wait for all the facts to be in before reaching strategic decisions. In a debate, one minute may be too late to respond. You have to be alert, witty and ready to roll. Why? Because others will have moved before us, and the game will be over. As military strategists tell us, most battles in history are decided before the first shot is fired. The side that has correctly chosen where and how to fight, wins.
In other words, to make strategic decisions, we need to be guided by a 'theory' that allows us to act responsibly and without giving ammunition to the enemy before all the facts are in. Theory is, at best, viewed with suspicion by many policy makers. It should not be. A causal theory about the future - 'if we do this, then the following will happen' - lies at the heart of strategic decision making. We cannot wait for all the facts.
It is sobering to realize how limited our natural capacity is to make correct decisions in complex situations. Researchers are quite clear on this. Unless we have explicit ways to step through the complexity, we make mistakes.
Good luck and go get him on Tuesday.