Unlike others, I haven’t made a sport of nitpicking Barack Obama’s staffing decisions. I’ve been disappointed in a few hires, but I’ve grown more comfortable with his decisions as the process has gone on. Today was the best day for announcements of the whole transition period. I am ecstatic about Obama’s selections for the Department of Justice. I really couldn’t be happier about the team he has put together there and what it portends for the future.
I feel very good about the selection of Leon Panetta as Director of Central Intelligence. Panetta is close to a perfect pick if you were going to choose someone from outside the Intelligence Community. And with all due regard for the Intelligence Community’s professionalism, they need a fresh, respected face to present to the country and the world. Panetta has been an outspoken opponent of torture and that is exactly what we deserve.
Now, having given some praise, I want to issue a couple of complaints or concerns. I don’t know anything about William Lynn. I hear he is going to be nominated for Deputy Secretary of Defense. Why do I have a problem with that? It’s pretty simple. Lynn’s current job is as Raytheon’s senior vice president of government operations and strategy. Before that, he was an undersecretary of Defense, and before that, he worked on Sen. Ted Kennedy’s staff on the Armed Services Committee. My problem isn’t specific to Mr. Lynn, but involves this rotating door between senate staff, the Pentagon, the upper management of our arms manufacturers, and back to the Pentagon.
Don’t get me wrong. I only think Raytheon is pure evil half the time. I used to work with Raytheon on radar projects and they’re doing critically important work. But the opportunity for corruption and waste is enormous when Raytheon can offer senior vice president jobs to decision makers on the Hill and at the Pentagon and then turn around and place those senior veepees back in decision making roles in the Pentagon when their party comes back into favor.
So that’s one concern I have, and it isn’t anything personal against Mr. Lynn, whose work with Kennedy makes me hopeful that he understands what it means to be a great public servant. Another concern I have is with the Obama Team’s seeming requirement that every member of their staff have an Ivy League graduate degree, preferably with an Ivy League undergraduate degree (summa cum laude), and a stint on the Yale or Harvard Law Review. It’s literally harder to get a high-ranking job in this administration than it is to get into Princeton.
Why does this concern me? After all, doesn’t it beat hiring people from fourth-rate uncredited religious schools that have no relevant experience? Well, sure it does, but there’s a middle ground. I grew up in Princeton and I understand Ivy League culture as well as anyone. The Obama Team is supercharged with brains, ambition, and…arrogance. And that last piece is the problem. David Halberstam was the first to point out the danger of too much Ivy League firepower (without enough earth-saltiness) when he penned The Best and the Brightest. JKF surrounded himself with some of the smartest, best-pedigreed people in the country, but that didn’t prevent him from going forward with the Bay of Pigs or LBJ (who kept them on) from escalating in Vietnam.
Just once I’d like to read a bio on an Obama pick and see that they have a degree from Penn State or Rutgers or Cal State-Northridge or SUNY-Albany. I’d like to see some high achieving folks that didn’t go to the top schools in the country…that maybe had to work a little bit harder to get where they are today. As it stands now, there is too much Ivy League and not enough state college. Talented people come from all over, and you need ‘all over’ to bring the correct breadth of world experience and compassion to the job of running our government.
