Over the weekend, I was invited to chat about SECDEF Gates on the May 9th Edition of Ian Master’s Background Briefing over KPFK–Los Angele’s Pacifica Radio.
You can listen to the interview here.
We’ll talk about this more later, but my line on Gates is this…he’s sketching out an agenda that is popular for
citizens to hear, but tough to enact (Remember SECNAV Winter and his “tough love” note about shipbuilding (and the LPD-17 program)? Despite the blogosphere adulation, that loft initiative didn’t work out too well…). Gates is laying out a mission for somebody willing to stay on the
job–either that, or it’s an attempt by a short-time “almost-out-the-door” executive to burnish his credentials–and perhaps (you heard it here first!) some positioning for a run at the presidency.
This is not a project that can readily be handed over a newbie, inexperienced in bureaucratic infighting. But it’s a perfect project for a patriotically-minded and wily elder who has nothing to loose (and it’ll keep the potential retiree from hanging ’round the house and driving Mrs. Gates up the wall).
Or, again, it’s a project proposal for guy fixing to run for President in 2012.
If the Presidency ain’t on the SECDEF’s agenda, Gates should say he’s staying on until the bitter end, and President Obama should publicly concur (with some public comment about how Gates will be taking some time to teach and mentor a new, tough cadre of Democratic Party-leaning National Security experts).
That…that would do more to scare the Pentagon than all the ASBMs in China!
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