Gates a 'Done Deal'
Martha Raddatz and Jake Tapper Report:
Sources tell ABC News that Defense Secretary Robert Gates will be staying on in the top Pentagon job, for at least the first year of the Obama administration. "It is a done deal," a source close to the process tells ABC News.
Gates, while a registered independent, has served numerous Republican administrations. President George W. Bush nominated Gates to replace the Donald Rumsfeld after the 2006 midterm elections, when the war in Iraq was spiraling out of control.
If this has been diaried, please tell me and I will delete.
I suppose it's bad news that a neocon warmonger is to remain at the Defense Department. I suppose it's good news that he's not a former member of the Clinton Administration. or is he?
Update I: Joe Klein, June 18, 2008:
When I asked him specifically if he would want to retain Robert Gates as Secretary of Defense, Obama said, "I'm not going to let you pin me down ... but I'd certainly be interested in the sort of people who served in the first Bush Administration." Gates was George H.W. Bush's CIA director — and he has been a superb Secretary of Defense, as good in that post as his predecessor, Donald Rumsfeld, was awful.
No doubt, partisan Democrats who equate bipartisan government with namby-pamby policymaking are horrified by the thought that Republicans might keep control of the Pentagon. But Gates has been neither ideological nor namby-pamby. He has demanded accountability. He fired the Secretary of the Army after the Walter Reed hospital scandal and the Secretary of the Air Force for lax stewardship of the nuclear arsenal. Early on, Gates encouraged the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq; he has been one of the few Bush officials open to negotiations with Iran. He has called for a larger budget for diplomacy — "which makes him far more popular than SecDefs usually are around here," a State Department official told me. He has clearly sided with the Army reformers against the Old Guard, and even called David Petraeus back to Washington to preside over a promotion board when it became clear that Petraeus-style officers — the bold and creative proponents of counterinsurgency strategy — were being blocked. (Petraeus apparently succeeded in getting several of his protégés promoted to general.)
Update II: TNR's Noam Schreiber, again last June:
No question that there would be some irate liberals if Obama went this route. But it would send a powerful message at the outset of his administration. In particular, it would buy him some real political cover for withdrawing from Iraq, however he decided to execute that. (Conversely, keeping Gates on while deferring withdrawal indefinitely could be an absolute disaster politically.)
Update III: I think I should get some sort of credit for not having the word BREAKING in the title.