The case for keeping Gates at Defense Dept.

Robert Gates is the only good cabinet appointment George W. Bush made. ---BBB

October 12, 2008
The case for keeping Gates
Posted by Nancy Youssef
McClatchy Blog

So read the headline in today’s Washington Post on an editorial encouraging Obama " if he wins " to keep Secretary of Defense Robert Gates in his post. It’s the latest in an increasingly growing chorus from pols, pundits, journalists and even some in military circles. Trudy Rubin, my friend and one of this nation’s premiere foreign policy columnists, wrote a fabulous piece earlier this week also pleading for Gates to stay on.

Now, I have been covering Gates’ tenure for all but six months of his time at the Defense Department, and I feel our dear readers should know how things look from inside the five-sided puzzle palace. From the day I arrived, all I heard the secretary stress was how much he is counting the days until he gets out of Washington. At first, he talked about going back to Texas A&M, where he was president until he was plucked to head up the Defense Department. Now he makes frequent references to his home in Washington State. Travel with him to enough military installations, and you will hear him tell the same jokes about how self-absorbed the Washington establishment is (and he really is right about that.). Walk into his office, and you will see pictures of his home in Washington State and his time as president of Texas A&M. He says they are there so people know he doesn’t have to be in his job; he’s got other places he could be. And most telling of all, he keeps a “Gates Countdown” clock that literally counts down the days until his time as the secretary is over. And he can tell you the number on any given day.

Gates has said he took the job out of a sense of patriotism. It was just after President Bush fired Donald Rumsfeld. Iraq was a quagmire, and troop morale was the lowest I have ever seen it. The department was suffocating, and Gates was some much-needed fresh air. And since he joined, the war has improved and morale is much better. Mission accomplished, according to many.

Regardless, I don’t think he will stay on.

Besides his desperate desire to get out of Washington, the secretary is operating like someone who is on his way out and wants to make sure the changes he has put in motion stay. In speech after speech, he calls for the military to maintain its counterinsurgency focus, not be tempted to drop it as soon as the Iraq and Afghanistan wars end. That is, his focus is on what will happen when he is no longer in charge. He wants his changes to be sustainable.

Even if he doesn’t stay on, I think Gates’ tenure has spurred a renewed debate on what the nation needs from its secretary of defense, particularly as it engages two counterinsurgencies. And perhaps that ultimately will be his gift to the next administration.