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By Mario Loyola

Echoes of Austerlitz
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09/21 - Kerrynomics and small business
09/20 - Diana Kerry's warning
09/17 - Typically French films
09/16 - Kelly Jane Torrance on books

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One book John Kerry clearly has not read is The Campaigns of Napoleon. Of course, reading a single book can’t turn anyone into a political genius--or a military one, for that matter. But Kerry might have avoided making the same blunders that led Napoleon’s enemies into one drubbing after another. Alas, John Kerry is their very type: Predictable in strategy and clumsy in tactics when on the offensive, Kerry is prone to indecision and panic on defense. Such qualities make winning elections needlessly difficult. But for commanders-in-chief fighting real wars, they spell calamity.



In the months after the Battle of Austerlitz in 1805, there was a lot of head-scratching among the generals of Austria and Russia. They had been defeated by a general from the future, and never really understood what hit them. But they could draw some important lessons from their own mistakes, lessons as valuable on the campaign trail of today as they were on the battlefields of Europe two centuries ago:



Don't waste time debating your strategy. Debate is the enemy of strategy.




On the eve of the Battle Austerlitz, Napoleon knew that he was badly outnumbered and even more badly outgunned. He had been unable to destroy the Austrian army before it linked up with a huge Russian force. Now, from atop the Pratzen Heights near the town of Austerlitz, the enemy generals looked down upon the bedraggled, exhausted French with contempt, confident that the next day would bring victory. They convened a grand council of war to discuss the broad outlines of their attack. The meeting resembled nothing so much as a dinner-party, and until three o' clock in the morning, the generals debated.




Meanwhile, in Napoleon's campaign tent, there was no debate. The newly-crowned Emperor of France was on his hands and knees on a huge map of the battlefield, quietly shifting small-unit figurines back and forth, devising the trap that was to become the historical masterpiece of his career. As night fell, 193 tactical movement orders issued from Napoleon's headquarters. When the Austrians and Russians awoke the next morning, they thought they were looking at the same battlefield. But unbeknownst to them, the battlefield had become Napoleon's deadly spider web.




Kerry has taken a key page out of the Austro-Russian playbook. According to Democratic strategists, the Kerry campaign has been paralyzed for weeks by a high-level debate over the candidate's message. Even now, at three o' clock in the morning on the day of the battle, they are still debating their strategy. And if that were not bad enough, Kerry recently enlarged the dinner-party by brining several Clinton operatives on board—opinionated and forceful debaters all. The Democrat has had great difficulty coming up with any strategy, and has reacted only by compounding the problem.




Avoid the doing the obvious. What is obvious to you is also obvious to your enemy.




The trap Napoleon had devised rested on a single lure: his poorly defended right flank. He had strung a few weak infantry regiments along the marshes down the gentle slope that extends south from the Pratzen Heights. Exactly as he hoped, that was where the enemy attacked. When the lead elements of the assault force made contact, Napoleon at first let his position there fall back, inviting the Austro-Russian force to roll up the flank. They accepted the invitation, and for several hours, the French observed regiment after regiment of the enemy, in column formation, rolling to the right across the crest of the Pratzen Heights, headed for what looked to be an easy victory. But the enemy had done the one thing they could not afford to do: the obvious.




Kerry invariably does the same. When the time came to choose a Vice Presidential candidate, after endless debate and careful consideration of the most outlandish options, Kerry did . . . the obvious. He picked the trial lawyer-backed Senator John Edwards: his closest competitor in the primary, and the clear favorite of both the party leadership and the liberal media. Months later, voters have seen little of the young, photogenic Edwards, leaving Kerry without a substantial running-mate on an already weak ticket. Instead of pitching the Bush campaign a nasty curve-ball, Kerry chose the one pitch they were sure to be expecting—and sure to be prepared for.




Tactical execution is king. Napoleon was fond of saying: “I may lose a battle, but I shall never lose a minute.”




When the Austrians and Russians decided to attack Napoleon's exposed flank, exactly as he hoped, they committed the key strategic mistake of the battle. Next, Napoleon needed his enemy to make a major tactical blunder--almost any would do. They did not take long to oblige.




The Austro-Russian force was performing a complex series of evolutions: The successive columns had to approach the crest of the Pratzen from reserve positions and then hinge south towards Napoleon's "collapsing" flank. At about 11 in the morning, one Russian column got delayed in its evolution, and became "unhinged" from the one in front of it, exposing a gap of about 200 yards at the Prazten's highest point--the very center of the front.




Napoleon reacted instantly. "How long will it take you take you to reach the top of the Pratzen?" he asked the commanders of his two central divisions. "20 minutes, sire," they responded. "Attack," said Napoleon.




The Russians and Austrians were stunned as they watched two huge columns of French infantry scaling the steepest part of the Pratzen Heights. Why was Napoleon attacking with two divisions against 20, up a steep hill at the very center of the front, when his own right flank was collapsing? Confusion led to indecision, and during the small window they had for an effective counter-attack, they fatally did nothing.




Tactical inefficiency--and the mistakes that inevitably follow--have been a problem at Kerry campaign headquarters. Here, too, the problem is profound. As some on his own staff privately admit, the campaign's internal operations are simply not focused enough. They have a singular inability to stay "on message," and have only reinforced the Bush campaign's charge that Kerry is a flip-flopper. Even Kerry's rapid-response team is bafflingly slow. They spend valuable time and energy on complex and ultimately pointless maneuvers, such as that farcical chart showing a "connection" between Bush and the Swift-Boat Veterans for Truth. And the last-minute recruitment of Clinton operatives is likely to further blur chains of command, allocations of responsibility, and clarity of message. Look for more time and energy wasted--and more tactical blunders.




Respond to the unexpected deliberately and quickly--and never, ever panic.




As Napoleon's sprint up the Pratzen developed into a major assault, the Austro-Russian force, half of which was oriented to the right--away from the point of attack--became paralyzed as it tried to adjust its formations and reorient itself. As Napoleon's cavalry and reserve followed the attackers, pouring through center of the front, the 200-yard gap the enemy had created for Napoleon widened dramatically. When he then succeeded in pushing one half of the enemy force back onto a frozen lake on his extreme right flank, the jaws of the trap slammed shut.



Using a few thousand men to pin down the rest of the enemy, Napoleon took advantage of his local (and fleeting) superiority of force to overwhelm the trapped divisions from three sides.




In the enemy camp, indecision turned to panic. The trapped half of the Austro-Russian force began to flee across the frozen lake, every man for himself. Napoleon watched for a few minutes from atop his horse, and then ordered several batteries of cannon to bombard the ice--until further notice. He then turned to the scene of the other battle with the bulk of his forces, leaving thousands upon thousands of Austrians and Russians to drown in the frigid waters. The Austro-Russians' easy victory had turned into a fearsome slaughter.




Kerry's reactions to the unexpected are almost always pitifully slow—except when he panics. For example, by the time Kerry responded personally to the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, it was two weeks too late. Just as the media was starting to lose interest in the story, Kerry's defense put the entire controversy right back on the front page. Even worse, by accusing the President of backing the Swift Boat Vets, Kerry gave Bush an opportunity to laud his opponent's Vietnam record and come off like a class act. Kerry compounded the disaster after the Democratic convention by attacking strongly-defended positions. A few weeks later, by the time of his midnight "offensive" after Bush's convention speech, Kerry was becoming visibly desperate.




Desperation has unfortunately been John Kerry's most visible trait throughout this whole campaign. He won the Iowa caucus by firing his campaign manager, mortgaging his house, and sinking $7 million into a last-minute grass-roots effort. It was a political Hail Mary pass for the history books. More recently, polls putting him well behind Bush for the first time instantly led to an embarrassingly public search for yet another team of advisors. Bad news is not necessarily embarrassing, but panicking in public is.




* * *



The depth of the Kerry campaign’s incompetence mesmerizes even Republican strategists. A front page New York Times article on Bill Clinton's recent hospital-bed chat with Kerry ("Kerry Enlisting Clinton Aides in Effort to Refocus Campaign") almost defied all rational explanation. Clinton's advice was bland enough: Focus on the economy, health-care, and other bread-and-butter issues. The fascinating thing about the story was that it was on the front page of the New York Times at all. There were no indications of a leak. The writers appear to have been officially briefed. Now, why would the Kerry campaign intentionally begin the week's news cycle with a story about how incompetent they are? Republicans were as baffled as they were delighted.



The New York Times story sounds an early warning of the dangers of a Kerry Presidency: His news coverage is rarely the product of his own strategy--and when it is, it hurts him anyway.



Democrats who are worried about this performance should consider that John Kerry would almost certainly run the White House exactly as he has run this campaign. That would be a disaster for all of us, but for Democrats most of all. They're still struggling to repair the damage Jimmy Carter inflicted on their party. And they had early warnings of Carter's weaknesses. Gerald Ford left the GOP Convention of 1976 fatally weakened by the Nixon pardon and the nearly successful primary challenge of Ronald Reagan. Carter nonetheless took only two months to blow a 30-point lead, and barely squeaked into the White House. The bizarre mistakes Carter made during that campaign (such as a Playboy interview that scandalized his Southern conservative base) and his inability to answer simple questions were clear omens of a Presidency most Democrats would rather forget.

In the middle of the War on Terror, making John Kerry commander-in-chief could well prove calamitous. Will there be a strategy, or endless debate? Will his tactics be deft and imaginative enough to keep the enemy on the run, or will he keep to his pattern of predictable and clumsy execution? Will America start to give off the same smell of fear, indecision, and desperation that John Kerry has exuded for months? Kerry's management of his own campaign contains many warnings about the kind of President he would make. Recent polls suggest that Americans are beginning to take heed.

Kerry likes to present himself as a good "campaign closer," most effective when he is behind. That might have been a virtue against someone other than Bush. But Bush has an abundance of the one quality Napoleon thought most valuable in a commander: l'audace, toujours l'audace. In the face of defeat, nothing matters more. Sadly for John Kerry, desperation is not the same thing.

Mario Loyola is a writer in Washington, D.C.