I don't know whether this will hurt or help Bama? But if Gates leaves as he said, this will be a non-issue.
Barack's Defense Secretary: Bob Gates? | Danger Room from Wired.com
Barack Obama has blasted nearly every element of George W. Bush's defense policy, from Iraq to Afghanistan to Iran. But the Democratic nominee for President, if elected, might very well keep Bush's Secretary of Defense, Robert Gates.
Yeah, I'm just as surprised as you are.
This Sunday's Times of London quotes Obama national security advsier and former Navy Secretary Richard Danzig as saying: “My personal position is Gates is a very good secretary of defense and would be an even better one in an Obama administration.”
That's quite a statement, from Danzig, a man who could himself "become the next secretary of defense," as NPR recently noted. So I asked him whether the quote was accurate, or had been taken out of context. Nope, Danzig replied. In fact, he had made it about ten days earlier, to the L.A. Times. And he hadn't changed his mind since.
So what gives here? How could Obama -- who's running to turn the page on the Bush White House's foreign and military portfolio -- look to keep that book in Gates' hands?
Obama's defense team certainly has serious beefs with Bush's military and diplomatic decisions -- to launch the war, to take resources from Afghanistan, to refuse serious talks with Iran. But, from my limited discussions with Danzig and others, the thing that really pisses them off was the management of the Pentagon during the Bush years. The spiraling budgets, the lack of accountability, the slipped deadlines, the circumventing of the chain of command, the politicization of policy -- to former Defense Department stewards like Danzig, those were the real horror shows.
But since Gates has been brought in, things have started to turn. Budgets have begun to return to reality. People lose their jobs when they can't do them right. Experts in their fields are being heard. Sound policy is often trumping adherence to political orthodoxy. And the Pentagon is slowly, slowly starting to focus on today's wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. That's the attraction of Gates.
Folks like Andrew Sullivan have written about Obama's conservative, don't-do-anything-dumb-and-radical temperament. That goes for military policy, too.
Back in May, I wrote, "Look, I know no Democrat is going to keep a Republican Defense Secretary around. But if McCain winds up in the Oval Office, I vote that Gates stays at the Pentagon."
Gates insists he's done, either way, in January, 09: "The circumstances under which I would [continue on] are inconceivable to me."
But Barack Obama seems like a pretty persuasive guy.
