Richard Fernandez cites a Classical Values piece that claims that McCain has moved “inside Obama’s OODA loop” — and thus Boyd is beating Alinsky.
In this battle of Boyd versus Alinsky though, Fernandez doesn’t think Obama really represents an Alinsky-style community organizer at all, because he’s not following Alinsky’s rules for radicals:
- ”Power is not only what you have, but what the enemy thinks you have.” Power is derived from 2 main sources — money and people. “Have-Nots” must build power from flesh and blood.
- “Never go outside the expertise of your people.”
- “Whenever possible, go outside the expertise of the enemy.”
- “Make the enemy live up to its own book of rules.”
- “Ridicule is man’s most potent weapon.”
- “A good tactic is one your people enjoy.”
- “A tactic that drags on too long becomes a drag.”
- “Keep the pressure on. Never let up.”
- “The threat is usually more terrifying than the thing itself.”
- “If you push a negative hard enough, it will push through and become a positive.”
Obama is breaking Alinsky’s rules by becoming the focus of the movement:
The ideal organizer never takes personal credit for success. He finds existing currents and empowers people to free themselves from oppressors in culturally familiar ways. Organizers may provide background support for the popular activity — often doing the hard, dangerous stuff behind the scenes — but the people must always see achievements as being due to their own effort. Finally an organizer fades away. The ambition of a great organizer is to ride into the sunset like Shane, leaving a people’s organization that will persist after he is gone.
Of course, it seems to be working just fine.