For eight hours I sat there, maybe 15 feet from Chuck Hagel. I tweeted. I filed. And like everyone present that January 2013 day, I grimaced. Frequently.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The now-outgoing defense secretary stumbled out of the gate and never recovered during his epic confirmation hearing. His former Senate GOP colleagues pounc\u00aded, engineering a public bludgeoning from which many in Washington say Hagel never bounced back. This camp believes the spectacle left him too politically damaged to be effective.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., and his Senate Armed Services Committee (SASC) mates did that while in the minority. They had fewer members than Democrats, and Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., ran the hearing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Ash Carter, the former deputy defense secretary, has been nominated to replace Hagel. The SASC again will conduct the confirmation proceedings, but this time, McCain and his GOP allies will dominate the dais and run the hearing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But don’t expect a repeat of the political slaughtering of Charles Timothy Hagel.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“I think his confirmation will sail through,” SASC member Roger Wicker, R-Miss., the new National Republican Senatorial Committee chairman, said. “What we [the GOP caucus] have discussed as a group is that of all the choices, Carter was the best and the most likely to sail through on a bipartisan basis.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
McCain agreed. “I don’t see any difficulties” that would make for a contentious confirmation, he said in a separate interview. “He’s been an able member of the Defense Department.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But, of course, that came with a big caveat: “Except that he understands he is the last man standing,” McCain said. “And that he’ll have no influence on decisions affecting national security. That’s all centered in the White House. His three predecessors have attested to that, vigorously.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I asked McCain if Carter’s confirmation hearing would be mostly about President Barack Obama and his national security track record. “Oh, sure,” he replied.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
To put a finer point on it, as our Pentagon correspondent Paul McLeary did shortly after Hagel’s resignation announ\u00adce\u00adment, the entire confirmation process will be a referendum on Obama.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
After talking with GOP senators, that might be putting it too mildly. They want to turn Carter’s session into a very public slaughtering of the entire Obama era, the commander in chief himself and his closest aides.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“That will be [Carter’s] biggest challenge … before the [SASC] and the Senate: Trying to explain what the president’s strategy really is and what they intend to do,” Roy Blunt, Republican Conference vice chairman and SASC member, said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
For Carter, this could prove tricky \u2014 not because he won’t be an articulate advocate of Obama’s policies, but because Republicans believe, on many global challenges, Obama doesn’t have tangible strategies. And they simply don’t think much of his policies they actually acknowledge.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Carter knows how to push back. The question will be when and how often to do so before SASC? Could miscalculating that make angry GOP sharks change their minds about letting an Obama nominee simply “sail through” their waters? \u25a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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