Obama's lack of drama on defense = keeping Gates on

CAPITAL JOURNAL: "Obama's Decision to Keep Gates Looks Even Better," by Gerald F. Seib, Wall Street Journal, 15 May 2009.

Nice piece by the always intelligent Seib.

Of course, out of the long list, only one item appears in bold: A radical revamping of the Pentagon budget.

Seib hits the nail on the head when he states:

Imagine the outcry if a Democrat newly appointed by Mr. Obama had proposed eliminating the F-22 fighter jet and winding down the Army's multi-billion-dollar Future Combat Systems program. Charges that Democrats were again reflexively gutting defense would have come instantly.

When, in truth, Bush-Cheney did far more to gut defense by the bad leadership they displayed.

Best part:

...rather than rely on others to brief congressional leaders, he called them himself to explain his changes, putting his personal imprimatur and credibility on the plan from the outset.

It was a virtuoso bureaucratic performance, showing why Mr. Obama decided that keeping Mr. Gates around was worth whatever grief he took from allies on the left for doing so.

Amen, brother.

Comments

[outback]

In reading a lot of these articles about Gates, I see lots of plaudits for Obama keeping him on, but very little praise for the man who originally elevated Gates to SecDef.

[David Emery]

But remember that, at least with respect to Army FCS (something close to home for me :-), both Obama and McCain are on the record as having very serious concerns.

I agree that the Republican politicians would make political hay from this if Gates weren't involved. But I think that you'd see a lot of the same Defense budgetary issues and initiatives if McCain won. That's one thing that made the last election so interesting; no matter who won, change was going to happen.