I do not recommend Chuck Hagel as our next Defense Secretary but he isn’t being considered because he will get along well with AIPAC or the Republicans in Congress. He is being considered because his selection would enable Obama to drink more of the Republicans’ milkshake. Whenever Obama can co-opt a prominent Republican and bring him or her into his government, he has a strong incentive to do it. Even if he isn’t bringing them in, an endorsement is worth a lot. Whether it is Robert Gates or Ray LaHood or Charlie Crist or Lincoln Chafee or Colin Powell or Dwight Eisenhower, Ronald Reagan or William Buckley’s kids, when Obama picks off traditional Republicans, he moves the GOP further to the fringe.
About The Author
BooMan
Martin Longman a contributing editor at the Washington Monthly. He is also the founder of Booman Tribune and Progress Pond. He has a degree in philosophy from Western Michigan University.
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He’s being appointed to maintain the illusion that Democrats can’t be trusted with managing national security.
No, actually, he is being appointed for the reason I mentioned.
What is the benefit of moving a fringe party with a pretty damned stubborn toehold on one level of power (forgive the messy metaphor) further to the fringe?
Shouldn’t our goal be to move them away from the fringe?
The advantage of having pretty much the whole Establishment back your presidency can be seen in the way Reagan’s legacy played out.
Why wouldn’t you want Hagel as Defense Secretary? I’ve been on the Hagel bandwagon since 2008-2009.
The way the fiscal talks are going, the Pentagon will likely have to oversee broad cuts during Obama’s second term. Given this fact, I think it’s necessary to have a legislative type at the head who has experience crafting and implementing federal budgets. He made a name for himself in foreign relations, but Hagel also comes from a pretty extensive business career and was generally known as a numbers guy when he was on the Hill. It’s true that this task could have also been accomplished with Kerry, but Hagel I think brings some unique advantages.
Count me on-board. Also, he’s never been an Israeli-firster, as you’ve noted, and I appreciate. More voices to oppose some bullshit Iranian War.
Not to mention that Hagel has long been an advocate to cut the Pentagon…I can see Hagel being very loyal to the president, as they worked together in the Senate, while also not being so close that he doesn’t challenging him.
Iunno why so many Dems/liberals are upset at this choice.
Bad grammar there…too many jumbled points at once. Anyway, you get my point.
I dunno why so many Dems/liberals are upset at this choice.
The only reason people are upset is because Democratic Presidents keep appointing GOPers to lead DoD. A GOPer would never do that. Also, while appointing Hagel might give some sections of Versailles a woody, no one outside the Beltway pays attention to the fact that he’s drinking Boehner and McConnell’s milkshake.
I don’t mind reasons not to appoint someone, but ‘a republican wouldnt do it’ is not a valid reason.
They are crazy.
.
How about it sends the message “Republicans are strong, Democrats are weak?”
We just got out from under that last election. I think appointing Hagel would be NOT driving in the knife.
I like the way you put that – “NOT driving in the knife.”
The Democrats have been winning the foreign policy debate for years now. The Republicans’ “soft on defense” attack sounds deluded and outdated.
The issue here isn’t defensive – “We can’t look weak by picking a Republican!” It’s about missing an opportunity to go on the offense.
That’s one way to look at it I guess. Why stop at defense then? Why not a whole cabinet full of co-opted repugs? Hagel is not Gates — he may be enough of a showboat to push back when he’s given massive defense cuts to administer, as I expect he will be. Is he really on board with Obama’s plans at defense?
Tarheel has a point. Aren’t there any dems out there with decent defense credentials? A retiring senator, say, like Jim Webb or Jeff Bingaman?
Tarheel’s point is not quite right. Obama won’t select Hagel because he’s bought into the notion that Democrats can’t be trusted to handle defense and national security. Indeed, he more than any recent Democratic President has earned a lot of capital on that front.
He would select him if he thinks his WH will gain from the appointment in some meaningful way.
Also, I haven’t the slightest clue what Obama’s plans are at Defense. He seems like a conventional liberal internationalist perfectly comfortable with the status quo. If we can stay out of Syria and any more stupid foreign entanglements in the next 4 years that would be a great victory.
No objection to Hagel per se – don’t know about his ability to manage a large dept as an executive, but that was one of the biggest question marks for Hillary Clinton (especially after her terrible management of her 2008 campaign) and she did just fine. The only two meaningful foreign policy viewpoints with any traction in DC are Expanding the Empire By Force (the neo-cons) and Maintaining the Empire (everyone else), and at least Hagel is on the right side of that fence.
That said, this is at least Obama’s fourth cabinet-level appointment of a Republican, with another offered but turned down (Judd Gregg), and I count exactly one minor cabinet post so far for any progressive (Secy of Labor). Just sayin’.
Judd Greg was political: get him out of the Senate to steal his seat. And Commerce is always taken by a moderate/conservative (not saying we shouldn’t break precedent, but I’d rather have taken the Senate with more members).
Moderate or Conservative doesn’t matter. The Head of Commerce is always a toe-sucker of the business community.
Obama is as Obama does.
Bet on it.
Look at what he does, not what he says he is doing.
Barack Obama was described as early as 1996 by Dr. Adolph Reed Jr. as “…a smooth Harvard lawyer with impeccable credentials and vacuous-to-repressive neoliberal politics.”
On the evidence? On the money.
AG
If this last sentence is complete, then the argument for Hagel’s appointment is incomplete. Because the unspoken premise is that co-opting Republicans doesn’t move the Democratic party to the right. That’s a premise that needs to be defended, both in terms of costs of a Republican in the position and the lost opportunity of a progressive not in the position.
You’re getting Orwellian on us BooMan – How can you possibly concoct this “drinks your milkshake” when Lindsay Freaking Graham just whipped Obama’s pathetic sorry ass. It doesn’t get worse than that. If you can’t stand up to Lindsay Graham you’ve got no business in the White House. Resign – at least Biden has some fight in him.
Obama has utterly humiliated himself, us, the process, and the country. Of his long litany of unforced capitulations, this is THE most galling. How long are you gonna keep carrying water for him? Serious question.
No, impeach him!
Precisely – Susan Rice withdrew her name from consideration, impeach Obama [what’s with all the [concern] trolls??]
If you can’t stand up to Lindsay Graham
I’m glad we have a President who keeps his eye on the ball, and doesn’t base his decisions on this type of dick-measuring.
Thank you! Reading this thread has been like watching my dog obsessively pee on all the same places the previous dog just peed.
Is there not an undersecretary that can get a recess appointment? Why must our government be hostage to the filibuster?
This gives strong support to earlier feelings that Obama prefers Republicans.
So which is it?
Did Obama not get the (Democratic) choice he wanted because of the filibuster, or does he prefer Republicans?
Or is he secretly a Republican in real life with big balls.
and why are the [concern] trolls out in such force these days?
Terror. It’s dawning on them just how badly Obama is going to destroy the Republican Party politically, so they are working overtime.
There’s a very strong case to that he is in fact a Rockefeller Republican or at least, he wants to be. His problem is that he can see that certain lefty solutions are simply better so he has to push to them.
Not unless you buy into the theory that his entire career before winning the Presidency was part of a Manchurian Candidate scheme.
Nobody familiar with him from his days as a community organizer, state senator or US Senator would describe him that way.
Why not Mourdock for HHS? He could hold prayer meetings to prove that Obama is not a Muslim.
Granted.
But…where is this set of actions moving him?
Further towards the center.
And you approve of this, Booman?
What happened to “Booman Tribune, A Progressive Website?”
You can’t drink your milkshake and eat it too, Booman. Y’gotta make a choice.
That sad little green frog in your logo? All trussed up and ready for the frying pan? I used to think it was Karl Rove. No more. Now I think it’s the leftiness brigade.
All sizzle and no meat.
Sad.
AG
Interesting that you of all people might be opposed to this, when Ron fucking Paul praised Chuck Hagel in his 2008 run as someone he might want as Sec. Defense or Vice President.
Ron Paul was neither right-wing, centrist or left-wing, seabe. He offered an entirely new set of positions. He offered a new paradigm in the history of Imperial America.
Hagel? If he signed on to that change, I suppose.
No matter…Paul may as well have tried to change the course of the Titanic by standing on the deck and blowing at the superstructure.
So it goes.
AG
Public debt isn’t a problem.
Riiiiight…
We can just fire up those printing presses and churn out more money.
Riiiiight…
AG
Yep, we can, so long as it’s not done to the point of hyperinflation (and we’re nowhere near that point). Anyone suckered into believing the public debt is a problem is just that: a sucker. For someone who thinks he’s a truth teller, why do you fall for Pete Peterson and the MSM’s scaremongering wrt debt?
Common sense. As above, so below. Spend above your means; borrow to be able continue to do so and eventually you get the horns.
Pete Peterson?
Who’s he?
The MSM? I don’t consume it. Not unconsciously, anyway. It’s all lies. Even when they do tell the truth it’s just a mistake.
Fuck with the bull, you get the horns.
Fuck the moneylenders and you get the collectors.
One way or another, you’re screwed.
Bet on it.
AG
Chuck Hagel slapping down Holy Joe, telling the truth about Iraq:
Chuck Hagel Gets Raw:
Having Spent Hours with Obama, Chuck Hagel Tells the Israel Lobby We Need Justice in Palestine or Our Foreign Policy Is Meaningless
I still don’t get the opposition to Hagel…
seems like a lot of weird anti-Obama concern trolling going on, I don’t understand it.
Pent-up stuff that was held back because of the election. Now that is over…four more years! Let ‘er rip.
I get the sentiment, its disgust for the enemy. I`m no stranger to that, its why i am horrible at the political game,i find it hard to act against those feelings.
Thats why i just shut up, because often it makes no political sense to start a war with nothing to gain.
The best you can say those people are acting real, horribly stupid- but real, just like the republicans who use that disgust to anger their base. And who we like to laugh at, as they are out of control.
I don`t trust republican politicians, but those two clips- there is not a word i object to. If he gets the position i`m sure that will be the way he manages, as he seemed real to me, speaking his mind without the bs.
could be, though I take most posters who write “Obama is throwing us under the bus again”, as concern trolls, not disaffected dems. – except for Voice in the Wilderness, who is wary about potential entitlement cuts. It’s clear by now, four years in, that Obama isn’t throwing dem concerns under any busses.
It’s not weird if it’s valid, Errol. The lesser of two evils? That “concerns” me, and apparently it concerns a lot of others as well.
AG
He’s a Republican. All Republicans are bad. Ergo, he sucks! I dunno, he’s probably better than a lot of Democrats that could be selected. How good is Panetta?
This.
I think on the actual issues surrounding the DoD, Chuck Hagel may actually be more liberal than any Democrat who would be considered. On foreign policy, he’s close to the President, and any successful President wants to make his foreign policy as mainstream as possible; using Republicans for this is smart.
I understand the hand-wringing about optics, but I think it’s short-sighted. Robert Gates didn’t make Obama (and thus the Democrats) stronger on Defense in the last election; President Obama did. This is a choice from a position of strength, pushing the Republicans further to the fringe on foreign policy as long as they oppose the President.
Moving our foreign policy in a more decent direction is what matters; if Chuck Hagel can make Peepaw McCain look even smaller when he throws a tantrum (and thus helps get the President what he wants) or helps shut down Guantanamo, I really couldn’t care less what party he says he belongs to.
Amen. The clearest and most rational comment here.
The continuity of Robert Gates did in fact make Obama stronger because it (1) sucked the “traitor Kenyan” attitudes out of military allowing the military to accept Obama initially as commander in chief (2) it provided the inside the department insight that allowed Obama to push Petraues and his direct reports for results without out threat or insubordination, (3) it allowed Obama to effective discipline both McChrystal and Petraeus for insubordination, and (4) it allowed the ending of don’t-ask-don’t-tell to happen.
Obama’s decision-making on national security makes that support no longer important as far as gaining the loyalty of the troops.
The Gates appointment was necessary in part because the vicious attacks on Obama’s patriotism during the 2008 campaign began to take root in some military units. That is no longer the case. The President has a huge amount of support and goodwill in the military. And after the capture and killing of bin Laden and the decisions regarding the support of the revolution in Libya, the military trusts him more.
The fact that Chuck Hagel is more liberal than any Democrat who would be considered is a huge problem for Democrats. What needs to happen to the US national security institutions to rein in deficits cannot be directed by the Scoop Jackson nostalgia wing of the Democratic Party.
McCain will never look smaller as long as the Village media have a warm chair on Sunday talk shows for him.
Guantanamo will not be shut down as long as there are cases with screwed up evidence that would not pass muster in a US civilian court but can be covered over with the kangaroo-court military tribunal system. Without a blanket pardon or something and effective resettlement, Obama will not be able politically (and likely now legally) to extricate himself from Guantanamo. Bush’s legacy has entrapped Obama on this one, just as the GOP hoped it would when they threw their hissy fits in 2009.
Stephen Walt makes the case:
Top five reasons Obama should pick Chuck Hagel for SecDef
Also: Foreign Policy author Kevin Baron wrote last week that “Inside the Pentagon, Hagel’s name is drawing more skeptical smirks than nods of approval.”
The Pentagon opposes him.
“The Pentagon opposes him.”
An even better reason !!!