Leon Panetta/Photo: Wikipedia Commons
It's always been assumed that Bob Gates would be a bridge appointment at the Defense Department. Indeed, some critics of President Obama's choice to continue Donald Rumsfeld's successor in the post were somewhat assuaged by this assumption he would soon be followed by someone not associated with the Bush administration. Gates has himself made clear that he wants to leave in a few months. So who would replace him? At The Envoy, Laura Rozen's sources are saying another former CIA director is a likely candidate,
Leon Panetta:
Officials say Panetta has emerged as the most likely nominee from a field of candidates that has reportedly included Under Secretary of Defense for Policy Michele Flournoy, Sen. Jack Reed (D-RI), former Deputy Defense Secretary John Hamre, former Nebraska Sen. Chuck Hagel, and former Secretary of State and chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Colin Powell, a somtimes Obama confidante.
Like Gates, Panetta has served as CIA director. The former California Democratic lawmaker and former Clinton White House chief of staff is widely considered to have done a terrific job winning the loyalty of the legendarily mistrustful CIA. He mostly kept the CIA from being a White House headache, has strong ties with both Republicans and Democrats in Congress, and has quietly traveled around the world developing solid relationships with world leaders, including in the Middle East, officials say. ...
"From the beginning, Panetta had enormous credibility with the White House," said a former senior U.S. official who helped advise the Obama campaign. Noting that Panetta also served as White House chief of staff and head of the Office of Management and Budget, the former official said Panetta has a "terrific record in Congress and did an extraordinary job from the moment he was appointed [as CIA Director] in developing the confidence of the Agency."
Whatever else one might say about such a choice, and we'll have more on that subject soon, Panetta is a Democrat. Since the Department of Defense was set up in 1947, Democrats have served as Defense Secretary for only 13 years, even though a Democrat has been President for 27 of those 64 years. The optics of such appointments? Even Democrats appear to accept the relentless Republican campaign attack that Democrats are "weak on defense."
In fact, as we know all too well, U.S. defense posture, being the military side of our often wretched overall foreign policy, has had some...uh...serious problems no matter who sat in the Oval Office: see Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan as well as gigantic overspending on items that are labeled as, but frequently are not, essential to national security. Doctrinal policies are obviously far more than the purview of the Secretary of Defense, whichever party shows up on his résumé.
And, as everyone from Bob McNamara to Donald Rumsfeld has discovered, the Pentagon, its allied manufacturers and members of Congress on both sides of the aisle are major roadblocks to change not only on tactical and strategic doctrine but on matters of what gets bought for what purpose. It is, indeed, as Eisenhower wrote in the first draft of his farewell address 50 years ago, the military-industrial-congressional complex. Even a Secretary of Defense who wanted to take that head-on is outmatched from the get-go.