{"id":65898,"date":"2018-02-09T06:00:05","date_gmt":"2018-02-09T12:00:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=65898"},"modified":"2018-02-08T22:03:11","modified_gmt":"2018-02-09T04:03:11","slug":"misunderestimated","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=65898","title":{"rendered":"Misunderestimated"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>As one who underestimated Donald Trump&#8217;s campaign until the moment Wisconsin got called, I&#8217;m doing a lot of retroactive learning.<\/p>\n<p>And <a href=\"https:\/\/amgreatness.com\/2018\/02\/08\/ooda-loop-president\/\">there are sources to a lot of that in this piece<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Long pullquote:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.thedailybeast.com\/donald-trump-delivers-an-anything-but-trump-ian-state-of-the-union\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"external noopener noreferrer\" data-wpel-link=\"external\">Some have argued<\/a>\u00a0that President Trump\u2019s recent State of the Union speech was designed primarily to troll Democrats. I disagree. The trolling effect (e.g., a steady stream of bad optics televised in prime time\u2014and subsequently easily turned around into an RNC ad\u2014showing Democrats behaving disrespectfully, rolling their eyes, shaking their heads, groaning, looking down at their cell phones, and even walking out in a huff) is real, but was a fully expected side-benefit of the address. No, the President is on something of a John Boyd\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.goalsys.com\/books\/documents\/DESTRUCTION_AND_CREATION.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"external noopener noreferrer\" data-wpel-link=\"external\">\u201cDestruction and Creation\u201d<\/a>\u00a0mission.<\/p>\n<p>Operating like a general giving the command for his massive political army to advance on the adversary, the State of the Union speech was the best political oration of my lifetime. I\u2019ll try to quickly detail why \u00a0by quoting a personal favorite, Richard Fernandez of the Belmont Club. In a piece he wrote in\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/pjmedia.com\/richardfernandez\/2016\/12\/02\/return-to-the-first-island-chain\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"external noopener noreferrer\" data-wpel-link=\"external\">December 2016<\/a>, just prior to Trump\u2019s inauguration as our 45th President and in the context of Trump\u2019s signaling with respect to what should be our posture with China, Fernandez wrote that:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><i>The Democratic Party should stop underestimating Donald Trump. The good news is that he moves at nongovernment speed. The bad news is that, due to his outsider status, nobody knows exactly where he is going.<\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Fernandez, like McLaughlin the year before, was noting the uptempo speed of Trump. McLaughlin\u2019s discussion of Trump\u2019s use of the OODA Loop, correctly noted that speed lies at the core of Boyd\u2019s theory of conflict, and has been the most influential element of Boyd\u2019s strategic thinking. Further, \u201cBoyd\u2019s core insight was about the interactive and disruptive nature of speed on human decision-making: success in conflict can be rapid and dramatic if one can \u201coperate inside the OODA Loop\u201d of the opponent.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>When you begin to understand this, you\u2019re well on your way to understanding our 45th president.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>The whole thing is worth a read.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>As one who underestimated Donald Trump&#8217;s campaign until the moment Wisconsin got called, I&#8217;m doing a lot of retroactive learning. And there are sources to a lot of that in this piece. Long pullquote: Some have argued\u00a0that President Trump\u2019s recent State of the Union speech was designed primarily to troll Democrats. I disagree. The trolling [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[367],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-65898","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-trump"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65898","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=65898"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65898\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":65899,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65898\/revisions\/65899"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=65898"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=65898"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=65898"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}