Archives » Saturday, November 08, 2008
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Michael Hirsh
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Nov 8, 2008 04:03 PM
The Obama transition team isn’t saying anything about who the
president-elect plans to pick as his Defense secretary, and current
Pentagon chief Robert Gates has routinely stated his desire to return
home to Washington state. At the same time, however, the widely admired
Gates “has never closed the door on the possibility of serving if
asked,” his spokesman, Geoff Morrell, told NEWSWEEK on Friday. Gates is
also acutely aware of the pitfalls of a rough transition, especially at
a time when the United States is engaged in two wars, in Iraq and
Afghanistan. Gates, who has already served seven presidents, has
sometimes reflected on the difficulties of the handoff from Republican
Gerald Ford—whose National Security Council he served on—to Democrat
Jimmy Carter in 1976-7. “He says they basically lost an entire year of
substantive work at a crucial time in the nuclear dialogue with the
Soviets,” says Morrell.
The Pentagon chief has been thinking
about the transition since long before the election, naming John Hamre
to chair his Defense Policy Board last year. Hamre, a former deputy
Defense secretary under Bill Clinton and also a possibility for the top
job under Obama, is currently president of the prestigious Center for
Strategic and International Studies. Gates has worked closely with
Hamre, asking him to help develop policies for the next administration.
“The secretary tasked Hamre and the Defense Policy Board with figuring
out the five issues the new [secretary] will likely have to confront
aside from the obvious ones, Afghanistan and Iraq,” says Morrell. Gates
has "done it and he's seen the consequences [a difficult transition]
can have. That's why he's so concerned about making sure we are as
prepared as possible." Democrats as well as Republicans on Capitol Hill
have praised Gates for his efforts at bipartisanship after the rocky
tenure of Donald Rumsfeld. A spokeswoman for the Obama team, Wendy
Morigi, when asked on Saturday about Gates’ prospects for being asked
to stay on, said she had no comment.
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