Gates appointment covers Obama's biggest weakness

NY Times:

President-elect Barack Obama has decided to keep Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates in his post, a show of bipartisan continuity in a time of war that will be the first time a Pentagon chief has been carried over from a president of a different party, Democrats close to the transition said Tuesday.

Mr. Obama’s advisers were nearing a formal agreement with Mr. Gates to stay on for perhaps a year, the Democrats said, and they expected to announce the decision as early as next week, along with other choices for the national security team. The two sides have been working out details on how Mr. Gates would wield authority in a new administration.

The move will give the new president a defense secretary with support on both sides of the aisle in Congress, as well as experience with foreign leaders around the world and respect among the senior military officer corps. But two years after President Bush picked him to lead the armed forces, Mr. Gates will now have to pivot from serving the commander in chief who started the Iraq war to serving one who has promised to end it.

In deciding to ask Mr. Gates to stay, Mr. Obama put aside concerns that he would send a jarring signal after a political campaign in which he made opposition to the war his signature issue in the early days. Some Democrats who have advised his campaign quietly complained that he was undercutting his own message and risked alienating war critics who formed his initial base of support, especially after tapping his primary rival, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, for secretary of state.

But advisers argued that Mr. Gates was a practical public servant who was also interested in drawing down troops in Iraq when conditions allow.

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Here is what is going on. Obama knows that his withdrawal pledge makes him vulnerable to criticism if Iraq blows up after the troops are pulled out. By keeping Gates he can argue that the military and the Secretary of Defense supported his bad policy and therefore they and Republicans should share the blame.

As someone who supports the military, I still think it was a good choice. Gates want agree to any Obama policy that is too radical.

It does remind me a little of Kennedy's naming Henry Cabot Lodge as ambassador to South Vietnam. It was a move to give him political cover and put a potential 1964 competitor in a position where he could not be critical of administration policy in South Vietnam. However, Lodge turned out to be a disastrous appointment. He worked with others in the State Department to undermine the Diem regime and may have given the green light to his assassins.

I think Gates will do better. He is certainly better than most of the Democrats who might have been named.