Conventional wisdom holds that when you decide to announce the departure of a Cabinet secretary, be sure to have a successor in hand. Instead, the White House announced Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel’s resignation without naming a replacement.
While it’s clear Hagel was pushed, the parting was mutual. The White House was frustrated with Hagel for questioning the White House’s line on Syria and Iraq; Hagel was frustrated with the White House’s lack of strategy and fed up with micromanagement.
Micromanagement is never a good thing, but it is harder to swallow when those doing the micromanaging don’t appear to have a clear strategy guiding them. Critics have blasted the administration for failing to think through its end game, whether in Syria, Iran, Ukraine, Russia or China.
Having taken a beating in midterm elections, the administration concluded it needed to shake things up. But like so many decisions by this administration, the snap decision to fire a loyal soldier who wasn’t the source of their policy woes backfired.
The administration created a debacle for itself by announcing Hagel’s resignation without naming a successor. Matters got worse when one candidate after another publicly declined one of Washington’s most powerful jobs. That included Michèle Flournoy, a top administration pick who has long coveted becoming the first female defense secretary.
Flournoy would apparently rather take the chance that her candidate, Hillary Clinton, will win the election and tap her for the job in 2017 than accept a sure thing with this administration.
Fortunately, qualified candidates remain, including former Deputy Defense Secretary Ash Carter.
On the surface, filling the post will be tough. The White House wants a loyalist who will execute policies from the inner sanctum rather than an independent thinker. Hagel — who remains devoted enough to the president to serve until his replacement is confirmed — wasn’t in the tiny inner circle where this administration’s decisions were made.
Second, the new secretary will have to face the new chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, John McCain, R-Ariz., who will use his new station to batter the administration on a daily basis.
Third, the Pentagon faces massive challenges as funding remains flat while internal costs rise.
That’s why the administration’s choice for defense secretary is so consequential. With budgets tight and a multiplicity of threats, the next secretary must be strategic and know DoD and the challenges it faces.
He or she must have the mettle to instill discipline in the department and reform its vast overhead structure that still consumes tremendous resources. Too often the discussion myopically focuses on trimming troop levels, benefits and bases rather than restructuring an organization with 800,000 government employees and nearly an equal number of civilian contractors.
The choice also matters because the next secretary will have far more power than the White House envisioned. After sacking two secretaries, Obama can’t fire a third one. This new secretary will know it, and that creates considerable independence.
The right person can get a lot done, especially given the tremendous talent that remains in the building, including Bob Work as the deputy, Frank Kendall as acquisition chief, Mike McCord as comptroller, and Mike Vickers as intel chief.
Obama’s next defense secretary must drive the Pentagon to become more efficient and strategic — without incessant meddling from the White House.
But Obama also must address a bigger problem. The decision to sack Hagel is emblematic of his administration’s poor decision-making abilities that have undermined US credibility around the world. It must stop lurching from one from crisis to another with no strategic thought as to how its actions are received or the future problems it causes.
