« Campaign Finance Stuff | Main | Incoherent Environmentalism » Democrats!20 Jun 2008 10:37 am Spencer Ackerman notes that there are plenty of non-Republicans well-qualified to serve as Secretary of Defense: Jim Webb. Richard Danzig. Michele Flournoy. John Hamre. My personal favorite — though apparently not eligible to be secretary until 2010 — Tony Zinni. (Who probably isn’t actually a Democrat, but is also not a Republican, and whom the building would greet with sweets and flowers.) Ash Carter. Right-o. Two other ideas -- Lee Hamilton, Larry Korb. Comments (42)
Oh, and I'm a hard-core Democrat. 
There's an argument to be made that if you can continue to self-identify as a Republican after the last seven years that you're clearly not qualified to make decisions on military matters.
Suppose one wants to see US troops pulled out of Iraq within a year or so. If they are, surely there's a substantial risk that as they leave, all hell will break loose. Isn't it better for the Democrats to have a Republican overseeing the withdrawal?
Please, please, please pick Richard "Winnie the Pooh is a seminal text on foreign policy" Danzig. Please. For the mockery.
Charlie Wilson.
Isn't it better for the Democrats to have a Republican overseeing the withdrawal? It won't matter. Anybody who was against the war at any point was labeled a RINO (Republican In Name Only) by the right wingnutosphere in a New York minute.
Claudia Kennedy.
It's foolish to want to replace somebody who is widely considered to be doing an excellent job simply because he/she is a Republican (or Democrat). It epitomizes cutting off your nose to spite your face.
It's foolish to want to replace somebody who is widely considered to be doing an excellent job simply because he/she is a Republican (or Democrat). It epitomizes cutting off your nose to spite your face. - Dave G Um ... cabinet positions are regularly replaced whenever the Presidency changes parties, no matter how good the job the person was doing who had the position before. That's part of the way a cabinet works. Why all of the sudden do we have this sudden ignorance about how cabinets work? Does anybody know the actual number of times a Dem. Pres. had a GOP cabinet member or a GOP Pres. had a Dem. cabinet member? I think it's very rare, isn't it? I can't think of any cross-party cabinet appointments from post-civil war until Clinton, but I'm not fact-monger that I would just happen to know this sort of thing off hand.
Colin Powell - he could final serve with integrity. Wesley Clark
Colin Powell - he could final serve with integrity. Wesley Clark
Dave G: Until recently, I thought exactly the same as you, but I've since become persuaded that a President Obama needs to appoint the best non-Republican for the job. The problem is that leaving a Republican in that position continues to cede the high ground on matters of national defense and security to the Republican Party, even though Gates' views are largely different from the dominant position of the GOP. The result of this is to further institutionalize the idea that only Republicans can be trusted with defending our country, thereby making large-scale policy changes almost impossible. So while Gates would no doubt continue to do a more than competent job as SecDef, his party identification as SecDef would be a significant hindrance to a President Obama's ability to reverse the Bushies on the big picture national defense/foreign policy issues.
Does anybody know the actual number of times a Dem. Pres. had a GOP cabinet member or a GOP Pres. had a Dem. cabinet member? Not sure about cabinet, but it's certainly happened in recent history at the Fed.
DAS-
Zinni won't be eligible until sometime in 2010 (SECDEF can't have served as a uniformed officer within the past ten years). But other than that, yeah.
I learned in school that discrimination is economically inefficient. Being a Republican would potentially undermine the likelihood that appointee would be the best pick along a multitude of dimensions, most notably that they wouldn’t be instituting policies they would actually want to see instituted. Preferring a Democrat is only discriminating in the sense that you generally discriminate against people less likely to succeed.
Lee Hamilton? The same guy that whitewashed the 9/11 hearings? You can do better, Matt.
Zinni won't be eligible until sometime in 2010 (SECDEF can't have served as a uniformed officer within the past ten years). But other than that, yeah. What? You're saying if there is an Obama administration that rule of law will be "magically" restored or something?
Larry Korb would be a fantastic choice - he pulls from both sides of the aisle as someone mentioned earlier should be more important than strict party identity. Once the assistant sec. of defense under Reagan, Korb is now at the Center for American Progress. http://www.americanprogress.org/aboutus/staff/KorbLawrence.html
Does anybody know the actual number of times a Dem. Pres. had a GOP cabinet member or a GOP Pres. had a Dem. cabinet member? I think it's very rare, isn't it The current tradition seems to be that the opposition party gets one cabinet seat in the administration as a nod to bipartisanship. Mineta for Bush, Cohen for Clinton.
Sheila Widnall.
I see Danzig getting the job, but I would think there could be a role for Chuck Hagel in the administration. UN Ambassador? Part of the foreign policy team but doesn't run a bureaucracy. Also, I like the idea of the rep to the UN being someone from a different party and his realism isn't exactly a bad thing. The right's big picture foreign policy is no good but some specific criticisms of the UN are well taken.
Given the 10-year rule, strike the suggestion of Claudia Kennedy. She won't be eligible until June 2010.
Sheila Widnall.
The current tradition seems to be that the opposition party gets one cabinet seat in the administration as a nod to bipartisanship. - guineapigfury But this current tradition is only as old as Bill "the Triangulator" Clinton, isn't it? And Bush continued with Mineta who, IIRC, had almost Howie Kurtz level conflicts of interest that made him fit right in with BushCO, even though he's a Dem. The comment was that it's stupid to let a successful cabinet secretary go because the Presidency changed parties. Yet that's how our country worked for the longest time, and it doesn't seem to have hurt us none.
I don't think there is any reason that the Secretary of Defense should particularly be a Republican, but there is a good reason why someone of the other party should at least be in the room when war decisions are made. The presence of William Cohen made a joke of the charges of wagging the dog by Clinton. Why would Cohen go along with an act of war out of partisan interest. Similarly, it would have been harder for the Iraq fiasco to occur if there was someone without allegiance to the Republican party sitting in on the deliberations. Even Yglesias was apparently convinced by the pro-invasion forces on the grounds that the evidence we weren't seeing must have been better thant he evidence we were. But that turns out to be nonsense. Unfortunately everyone who knew it was nonsense either believed it was worth spouting nonsense for the sake of the party, or felt constrained by military duty to say nothing. (Obviously the possibility of a Liebermann as the democrat undercuts this a bit. But then I wonder how he would have reacted if he had to be in on the distortions rather than committing himself on the basis of them). Given the confidence that people need to have in the war making decisions of the exectuive it is necessary not only to be moral, but to look moral. And having a republican in the room would help with this. It is true that it need not be a cabinet position. It might be better to have it be a presidential advisor.
I'd like to see a custom where the Attorney General is always a true hater from the other party, to keep administrations in line. We got a look at how well that might work with Ken Starr, a man whose own hand-picked ethics adviser and personal friend walked out on him because he had become an "advocate for impeachment" rather than the even-handed investigator he was supposed to be. The GOP managed to be the force that destroyed the independent council law.
Larry Korb would be a fantastic choice - he pulls from both sides of the aisle as someone mentioned earlier should be more important than strict party identity. Once the assistant sec. of defense under Reagan, Korb is now at the Center for American Progress. http://www.americanprogress.org/aboutus/staff/KorbLawrence.html
Didn't anyone read Richard Clarke's book? Clinton had a Repub holdover in Cohen. Cohen fought Clinton and the anti-terrorist working group at every opportunity to strike Al-Qaeda. The generals at the Pentagon knew Cohen was with them whenever they wanted to ignore Clinton or tell him things were impossible. These are important times and Obama will need someone as SecDef that is good and loyal. You can't argue for Gates unless you can prove no Democrat is qualified (which is silly) or that Gates would be loyal. I don't know how you could do that.
Why the assumption that Gates isn't a Democrat? Probably because he's been a competent SecDef, but really guys, are you kidding? A long-serving CIA employee once remarked that the two things he never met during his career at The Agency were "...an assassin, and a Republican."
As for the AG, I think you're looking at things from too narrow a perspective. Most Administrations aren't as corrupt as this one, ergo the AG's main job typically isn't the default IG for the whole Administration. But the AG oversees most civil rights initiatives, the Voting Rights Act enforcement, antitrust, prosecutions under the environmental laws, etc., etc. It's very important for him to be sympatico with the president who, presumably, was elected in large part because of what voters thought would be his position on how vigorously to enforce these laws. Theoretically, a friendly Congress could overrule the requirement that the Secretary needs to have been a civilian for 10 years -- it's only a statutory requirement. Indeed, Wikipedia tells me this was done when Truman appointed Gen. George Marshall to the position in 1950.
The only reason people mention Gates name is because he's the first Sec. of Def we've had in a long while who isn't a complete tool. I'm actually rather amazed.
Lon, Actually, Congress is supposed to do this. Congress could have said "we will go along with and approve this war only if you prove to us the need to have it". Actually, they kind of did. But Bush & CO played fast and loose with the evidence and the truth. How would it have been any different if you had a Dem in the executive branch? They could have told him the meeting was at 11:00 AM, but started at 9:30 AM with what they didn't want the Dem. to hear. Of course, the real problem with the war was the media driven war fever ... but that's another story.
DAS, In JFK's cabinet, both Treasury Secretary Douglas Dillon and Defense Secretary Robert McNamara were registered Republicans. Perhaps Kennedy believed that the close margin of victory required him to reach out to Republicans. Ackerman and several commentators are stating that certain former military personnel such as Zinni or Claudia Kennedy are ineligible to serve in DOD positions until ten years have elapsed. An exemption can be enacted by legislation. George Marshall served as Truman's Secretary of Defense in his second term.
Adding to Vardranor's correction, vis., picking cabinet members from the other side of the aisle: FDR famously picked Stimson and Knox, both interventionist Republicans, for his Secretaries of War and Navy in his second term.
"Similarly, it would have been harder for the Iraq fiasco to occur if there was someone without allegiance to the Republican party sitting in on the deliberations. I’m not sure anything the Bush administration engages in could be accurately termed “deliberations”. Regardless Colin Powell wasn’t an involved in the decision making on Iraq, and even Rummy said Bush never asked him if the invasion was a good idea. Appointing a member of the opposite party isn’t any kind of solution to that type of problem. If anything a president would be less inclined to listen to a dissenting voice if that dissenting voice came from the opposition party.
Why the assumption that Gates isn't a Democrat? Probably because he's been a competent SecDef, but really guys, are you kidding? While it doesn't quite override a non-specific quip from an anonymous CIA employee, he was selected as a Republican member of the ISG. A better question is why would one even think that Bush would ever appoint a Defeatocrat to Secretary of Defense during the greatest war ever? Or do his generally sane views on Iraq make him a Democrat by definition?
Vadranor and Joel Turnipseed, Thank you for the clarifications. I obviously know who the people you've mentioned are, but somehow I wasn't aware of their party affiliation. Although McNamara worked out so well, didn't he?
For the role of "token Republican cabinet member," I nominate Michael Bloomberg for Secretary of Transportation.
Obama would be wise to put his GOP appointees in Cabinet positions that Republican regard as womanly or non serious - like HHS, Transportation, Labor.
everyone's chattering as if obama has won already...don't start suckn each others dicks just yet
Comments closed July 04, 2008. |
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Heads in the Sand
How about picking the best person, rather than the best Democrat? If that person happens to be Gates, or another Republican, so what? (This assumes that he/she would be comfortable carrying out the policies of a President Obama.)
I learned in school that discrimination is economically inefficient. Don't the voters and taxpayers deserve the best person at every position, regardless of party?
Posted by Dave | June 20, 2008 10:46 AM