The Gates reappointment is welcome news, given that he has provided stable, sober leadership during two wars, and overseen dramatic improvement with the Petraeus surge. Gates’s stellar academic record and years of government service probably make him on paper one of the most qualified government servants in American history. He has proven tough in firing people who were caught in scandal or free-lanced to the media, and has been outspoken when necessary.
Politically it makes sense that for a year or two Obama won’t have to worry that a wartime liberal secretary might embarrass an incoming Democratic administration (cf. the ill-starred Les Aspin and controversies over homosexuals in the military, bottoms-up-review, no tanks for Somalia, etc., and, then cf., the Clintonian face-saving scramble to find a centrist professional like Perry and then a Republican moderate replacement like Sen. Cohen).
That said, one wonders if, while these centrist appointments please moderates and conservatives (given the possibility of something much harder left), in aggregate they will undermine the hope and change mantra.
You see we are now moving well beyond the tentacles of the Clinton octopus (Emanuel, Podesta, Holder (?), etc) and even the promise to reach across the aisle and appointment a Chuck Hagel-like anti-Bush maverick — and instead are entering Bush territory itself. And that raises questions beyond “adjustments” seen during the campaign on everything from drilling and coal to campaign financing and NAFTA.
Rightly or wrongly Gates is the custodian of existing Bush U.S. military/defense policy (despite earlier positions on Iran not that much different from Obama’s advocacy of engagement without preconditions) and that touches upon everything from staying in Iraq until 2011 in accordance with the Petraeus withdrawal plan; keeping Guantanamo open a bit longer; being tough on Russian aggression in Georgia; homeland-security provisions; movement ahead on missile defense (cf. the Obama campaign video on that); present policy toward Iran; Predator strikes in Pakistan; and on and on — many of which policies candidate hope-and-change Obama in the past has strongly denounced.
Imagine Candidate Obama announcing in August, “And if I am elected President I promise to enact hope and change with Ron Emanuel as my chief of staff, John Podesta as my transition chairman, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Larry Summers as my chief White House economic adviser, and Bob Gates as my secretary of Defense.”
Bottom line: very good appointment
Swiped from NRO's The Corner
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