MH

Do either of you have any suggestions for somebody with significant managerial experience, CIA/Intel experience, plus who would be seen by more or less everybody as a totally clean break from the Bush years?

That would depend on the extent to which you insist on it being a break. Feinsten and Rockefellar — the new and old heads of the Senate intelligence committee — had Steve Kappes in mind, as I understand it.

I don’t think that you can insist on a break so complete that you don’t pick anyone senior from inside the CIA if the alternative is someone unsuitable, so the real question is whether Panetta is unsuitable given that there are experienced alternatives.

That’s just a personality difference between the two of us.

The other one I haven’t been thrilled about is Clinton, but I do find it a defensible choice, with plenty of very agreeable political ramifications.

But certainly, I’m giving the benefit of the doubt here. For the record, I did the exact same with the incoming Bush administration (where most of my glowing praise was in service of their enormous experience–fat lot of good that turned out to be).

But I think the difference in perspective here isn’t that I’m biased and cynics are not (oh, cynicism is never biased), it’s that you’re looking at the ways in which the nominees may fail, and I’m looking at the ways in which the nominees may succeed. Half-full half-empty sort of thing.

Clearly, Panetta wasn’t Obama’s first choice, and I think it’s pretty reasonable to assume that he cast around for exactly the kind of candidate you’re speaking of. CIA Director was both the first appointment made and the last appointment leaked; there’s a reason for that lag, would be my hunch. In the end, Obama could have leaned one of two ways. Giving up a degree of “new direction” for the sake of field experience, or giving up a degree of field experience for the sake of new direction. He went with the latter, and I have to say if he was going to compromise in either direction, I’m glad he did so in that one.

I also think none of us are quite getting the big picture here, on either Panetta’s intended role or his experience. On the latter, Tim Roemer:

I think that underestimates his chief of staff experience, when you’re dealing with the CIA and the national security administration on a daily basis. He has about three years of experience dealing with the heads of agencies, with crises, and with national and foreign policy issues. I think he does bring a knowledge of the CIA and good national security experience from both his time on the Hill and the Iraq study group…and as chief of staff to the president where you’re immersed in it on an hourly basis. Leon is going to be dealing with sensitive issues, like Guantanamo, and renditions and torture, and [there needs to be] a good working relationship with Capitol Hill, and he has that.

There are two nodes in the White House – Intelligence paradigm: Obama chose one from the former. But unlike, say, Porter Goss, there’s no indication that Panetta has no intention of surrounding himself with experts and insiders and merely wishes to staff the place with ideological-driven hacks. My guess would be at his press conference we hear a lot about how he intends to work closely with the director of national intelligence, keep on a lot of the current deputies, and keep the CIA strong (i.e. he’s not there to burn down the place). But what he’s not going to be is a career spook which with have an awkward relationship with the new White House, nor is he going to be an ideological hack intending to bend it to some sort of top-down agenda. That strikes me as a smart balance.

Oh, and finally on Adam’s repeated point about what happens if it goes wrong: of course that looks bad for Obama. But that is also true if Obama appoints anybody using any rubric to the position and they fail, so I’m not quite getting the relevancy. Obviously, failure is bad.

Well yes, and then there was Clinton era CIA head James Woolsey, career spook with no political or managerial acumen to speak of who just ended up a caretaker, more or less shut out of the process.

The issue, I think, is that there were people with CIA/Intel experience AND managerial expertise, but Panetta isn’t one of them. The question may have been over whether those people protested enough over ‘enhanced interrogation’ but it seems to me that where you can combine the managerial expertise with the experience, that some of those candidates were better choices than Panetta. Particularly true when the potential problems this could cause for Obama, who will be as bare-arsed as any Democrat could be if something does go wrong, are somewhat large.

Or, the analogy can run like this. Say you have a very large 6A inner city school that is failing miserably in every conceivable way. Now, Rojas’ line would say you should look to the senior-most teacher in that school and promote them to principal. But at that point you run exactly the risk of just magnifying the problems further, to say the least. Barring some obvious standout choice within the school, it might be better to go fishing.

Other people might say it would be worth it to bring in someone who doesn’t necessarily come from the realm of education, but knows how to right a sinking ship (say, a business executive with an interest and a track record of whipping failed institutions into shape).

How about you bring in somebody from outside the school with a proven track record of success in education? Good luck trying to run a high school on a business model.

The dichotomy you’re proposing–use a complete outsider or yeild entirely to existing institutional paralysis–is a false one. It is inexplicable that Obama cannot find a single person with professional diplomatic experience who is capable of advocating for US interests as Secretary of State, and equally implausible that he cannot find a single person with intelligence expertise who can be relied upon to run the CIA responsibly. The responsible course, obviously, is to pick someone who will advocate for the President’s priorities and who has background in the field in question. He’s done that with most of his appointments; yet somehow for these two he hasn’t done so.

In fact, he doesn’t seem to have tried very hard. Instead, he has decided that political utility is a more important principle in the operation of his administration than is field expertise. The only mitigating factor is that, due to the nature of the CIA, we will never know about the worst consequences of Panetta’s inexperience are. Unless, as Adam suggests, someone leaks them.

By and large, the decision to put jobs in the hands of people who don’t know how to do them is its own punishment. We will see what sort of price the President pays for his hubris.