Barack Obama will be getting off on the wrong foot, to put it mildly, if he does what seems likely now: allow Robert Gates to stay on as Secretary of Defense.
For reasons that are unclear to me, many in Obama's inner circle seem to believe that it's important to bring so-called "moderate" Republicans into the president-elect's national security team. That is an awful idea, for two reasons: first, even though many of the names being floated -- such as Gates, Dick Lugar of Indiana, and Chuck Hagel of Nebraska -- come from the traditional wing of the GOP, and they are not neoconservatives, they are almost guaranteed to push for an expansion of the U.S. military budget and a bigger armed forces. And second, by doing so Obama would be conceding many critics' argument that Democrats are somehow not suited to control the national security apparatus.
Gates has reportedly already been working on the transition to an Obama administration, and he certainly hasn't done anything to damp down speculation that he is a candidate for the job under Obama.
His thumbmail bio, for those who've forgotten: Gates spent decades in the CIA as a Soviet specialist, where he consistently inflated the threat from the USSR to justify a U.S. military buildup, especially under President Reagan; he served as a top CIA official under Reagan and Bush I, who nominated him (twice) to be CIA director. The first time, Gates was shot down in the Senate because of his ties to the Iran-contra scandal of the mid-1980s, but the second time was a charm, and he was CIA director from 1991 to 1993.
While we don't take a lot of editorial stances here (edit OK, OK, we do), we do think that keeping Gates around would be a very, very good idea. After all, Secretary Cohen (Clinton administration) didn't really engender any of those thoughts.
By: Brant
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