Not for nothing but he's a Democrat. In nominating him, the President is breaking with a long Democratic tradition going back to the Clinton years where the Secretary of Defense has to be a Republican to show that the Democratic President is nevertheless 'tough on defense.'
For more on Carter see here
http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2014/12/Ashton-Carter-Picked-To-Replace-Chuck-Hagel-As-Secretary-of-Defense/383342/
I mean the track record of Obama's GOP Defense Secretaries is not so hot. Chuck Hagel certainly didn't work out. Then look at the hatchet job that the allegedly bipartisan Robert Gates did on the President:.
"The sometimes bitter tone in Gates’s 594-page account contrasts sharply with the even-tempered image that he cultivated during his many years of government service, including stints at the CIA and National Security Council. That image endured through his nearly five years in the Pentagon’s top job, beginning in President George W. Bush’s second term and continuing after Obama asked him to remain in the post. In “Duty,” Gates describes his outwardly calm demeanor as a facade. Underneath, he writes, he was frequently “seething” and “running out of patience on multiple fronts.”
http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/robert-gates-former-defense-secretary-offers-harsh-critique-of-obamas-leadership-in-duty/2014/01/07/6a6915b2-77cb-11e3-b1c5-739e63e9c9a7_story.html
So what we're learning is that basically Gates was a phony who put on a bipartisan demeanour because it was beneficial to him in advancing himself but while the President selected him in good faith, Gates always saw himself during his years in the Obama White House not as an American first helping the President on national defense but rather as a Republican first, sort of Sean Hannity goes to the White House. Again, there's a name for that: phony.
He whines about Obama not trusting him but then consider:
"While serving as defense secretary, Gates gave Obama high marks, saying privately in the summer of 2010 that the president is “very thoughtful and analytical, but he is also quite decisive.” He added, “I think we have a similar approach to dealing with national security issues.”
http://mediamatters.org/blog/2014/01/13/bob-woodward-fox-news-and-how-gates-memoir-got/197556
I certainly agree with MM about Woodward who seems to be obsessed with attacking the Obama Administration.
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/02/28/1190439/-In-which-the-Obama-administration-threatened-to-send-Bob-Woodward-to-a-gulag-for-thought-crimes
Still, MM takes the Gates interview where he is supposed to have tamped down on the narrative that he attacked and repudiated Obama in his book more at face value than I did. As Gates' interviewer points out his method in the book was sort of saying really jarring things like the above quotes about Biden but a few pages later kind of pulling back from it. That of course, enables Gates to say some very provocative things and then pull back on it. He gets to have it both ways as the big statements will be remembered while the pullback much less so but when called on it he just has to refer to the pullback.
He's smart enough to do it in a way where he can please both Fox News and Media Matters.
Anyway, if nothing else, this should make it clear that Democratic Administrations should select Democrats to run the Defense department.
UPDATE: This link in a nutshell shows the problem with a Democratic President selecting a Republican Secretary of Defense.
http://www.businessinsider.com/gates-panetta-iraq-syria-2014-9
It's kind of a pathetic, self-deprecating move that internalizes the specious GOP lie about Democratic foreign policymakers and basically begs the GOP to approve of it: 'I have a Republican run my defense department so surely even Republicans can admit we're doing it right.'
Yet it doesn't really work. It certainly doesn't forestall the GOP from throwing tomatoes and razzing another 'feckless Democratic foreign policy'-they even held Hagel up during his nomination.
Then once the Repub SecDef steps down they right away right a scathing book and run to Fox to peddle it.
For more on Carter see here
http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2014/12/Ashton-Carter-Picked-To-Replace-Chuck-Hagel-As-Secretary-of-Defense/383342/
I mean the track record of Obama's GOP Defense Secretaries is not so hot. Chuck Hagel certainly didn't work out. Then look at the hatchet job that the allegedly bipartisan Robert Gates did on the President:.
"The sometimes bitter tone in Gates’s 594-page account contrasts sharply with the even-tempered image that he cultivated during his many years of government service, including stints at the CIA and National Security Council. That image endured through his nearly five years in the Pentagon’s top job, beginning in President George W. Bush’s second term and continuing after Obama asked him to remain in the post. In “Duty,” Gates describes his outwardly calm demeanor as a facade. Underneath, he writes, he was frequently “seething” and “running out of patience on multiple fronts.”
http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/robert-gates-former-defense-secretary-offers-harsh-critique-of-obamas-leadership-in-duty/2014/01/07/6a6915b2-77cb-11e3-b1c5-739e63e9c9a7_story.html
So what we're learning is that basically Gates was a phony who put on a bipartisan demeanour because it was beneficial to him in advancing himself but while the President selected him in good faith, Gates always saw himself during his years in the Obama White House not as an American first helping the President on national defense but rather as a Republican first, sort of Sean Hannity goes to the White House. Again, there's a name for that: phony.
He whines about Obama not trusting him but then consider:
"While serving as defense secretary, Gates gave Obama high marks, saying privately in the summer of 2010 that the president is “very thoughtful and analytical, but he is also quite decisive.” He added, “I think we have a similar approach to dealing with national security issues.”
"Obama echoed Gates’s comments in a July 10, 2010, interview for my book “Obama’s Wars.” The president said: “Bob Gates has, I think, served me extraordinarily well. And part of the reason is, you know, I’m not sure if he considers this an insult or a compliment, but he and I actually think a lot alike, in broad terms.”
"During that interview, Obama said he believed he “had garnered confidence and trust in Gates.” In “Duty,” Gates complains repeatedly that confidence and trust were what he felt was lacking in his dealings with Obama and his team. “Why did I feel I was constantly at war with everybody, as I have detailed in these pages?” he writes. “Why was I so often angry? Why did I so dislike being back in government and in Washington?”
Maybe because you're a GOP phony? If anything, it sounds like Obama trusted Gates too much. Gates claims to have an overall positive view of the President but he expresses contempt for Vice President, Joe Biden.
"Gates, a Republican, writes about Obama with an ambivalence that he does not resolve, praising him as “a man of personal integrity” even as he faults his leadership. Though the book simmers with disappointment in Obama, it reflects outright contempt for Vice President Biden and many of Obama’s top aides."
"Biden is accused of “poisoning the well” against the military leadership. Thomas Donilon, initially Obama’s deputy national security adviser, and then-Lt. Gen. Douglas E. Lute, the White House coordinator for the wars, are described as regularly engaged in “aggressive, suspicious, and sometimes condescending and insulting questioning of our military leaders.”
You know who always showed respect for our military leaders? Donald Rumsfeld, Gates' predecessor in the Bush Administration.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/timreuter/2014/05/05/donald-rumsfelds-maddening-confession-in-the-unknown-known/
http://www.nbcnews.com/id/15003903/ns/world_news-mideast_n_africa/t/two-retired-generals-blast-rumsfeld-iraq/#.VLT7NCvF9O8
He sure is talking differently now than he was talking while at the White House:
"It got so bad during internal debates over whether to intervene in Libya in 2011 that Gates says he felt compelled to deliver a “rant” because the White House staff was “talking about military options with the president without Defense being involved.”
"Gates says his instructions to the Pentagon were: “Don’t give the White House staff and [national security staff] too much information on the military options. They don’t understand it, and ‘experts’ like Samantha Power will decide when we should move militarily.” Power, then on the national security staff and now U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, has been a strong advocate for humanitarian intervention."
"Another time, after Donilon and Biden tried to pass orders to Gates, he told the two, “The last time I checked, neither of you are in the chain of command,” and said he expected to get orders directly from Obama."
Again, you see how Obama's theory of bipartisanship hurt him. In bringing in a GOP SecDef-he repeated the mistake with Hagel-all he got himself was someone who saw him as the enemy: in claiming that Obama and his Administration didn't trust the military the real trust issue is clear: Gates never trusted the Administration. On the other hand, Bush got himself what mattered to him more than anything: loyalty.
I mean I don't think either Rumsfeld or Gates himself ever told Cheney to go fuck himself the way Gates allegedly told Biden.
Media Matters kind of has a different take on Gates, arguing that his book is not the broadside against the President that Woodward tries to make-of course, Fox News ran with the Woodward Narrative.
http://mediamatters.org/blog/2014/01/13/bob-woodward-fox-news-and-how-gates-memoir-got/197556
I certainly agree with MM about Woodward who seems to be obsessed with attacking the Obama Administration.
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/02/28/1190439/-In-which-the-Obama-administration-threatened-to-send-Bob-Woodward-to-a-gulag-for-thought-crimes
Still, MM takes the Gates interview where he is supposed to have tamped down on the narrative that he attacked and repudiated Obama in his book more at face value than I did. As Gates' interviewer points out his method in the book was sort of saying really jarring things like the above quotes about Biden but a few pages later kind of pulling back from it. That of course, enables Gates to say some very provocative things and then pull back on it. He gets to have it both ways as the big statements will be remembered while the pullback much less so but when called on it he just has to refer to the pullback.
He's smart enough to do it in a way where he can please both Fox News and Media Matters.
Anyway, if nothing else, this should make it clear that Democratic Administrations should select Democrats to run the Defense department.
UPDATE: This link in a nutshell shows the problem with a Democratic President selecting a Republican Secretary of Defense.
http://www.businessinsider.com/gates-panetta-iraq-syria-2014-9
It's kind of a pathetic, self-deprecating move that internalizes the specious GOP lie about Democratic foreign policymakers and basically begs the GOP to approve of it: 'I have a Republican run my defense department so surely even Republicans can admit we're doing it right.'
Yet it doesn't really work. It certainly doesn't forestall the GOP from throwing tomatoes and razzing another 'feckless Democratic foreign policy'-they even held Hagel up during his nomination.
Then once the Repub SecDef steps down they right away right a scathing book and run to Fox to peddle it.
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