Chuck Hagel—Lindsey Graham, Rick Santorum, William Kristol, Sheldon Adelson and hold-out neo-cons notwithstanding–will be the next Secretary of Defense. In all of American history only nine presidential cabinet nominees have ever been rejected. Only three in the 20th century. The last one was John Tower, President George H.W. Bush’s 1989 nominee for secretary of defense. He was done in by allegations of “drunkenness, womanizing and sharing secret insights into U.S.-Soviet arms negotiations with defense contractors.” And still the (Democratic majority) Senate vote was close: 53-47.
Hagel’s main detractors find the decorated Vietnam vet and former Republican senator from Nebraska insufficiently hawkish. Specifically, being against the Iraq war, candid about Pentagon bloat, less than gung-ho about pre-emptive strikes on Iran, realistic about Israel’s American lobbying efforts and unimpressed by U.S. sanctions against Cuba. None of which will carry the day for the hard-line right.
Criticism from the left is over the 1998 “openly, aggressively gay” insult he used to describe an ambassadorial nominee. He has since apologized while underscoring his support of gay troops and their families. It will come up at his hearing, but the gay community seems content to take him at his word that his thinking, like a lot of others, has evolved.
Ultimately, political players are judged by the adversaries they keep. So, thanks again, discredited neo-cons. The Rummy-Cheney-Wolfowitz-Perle-Feith-Abrams crowd–and those who miss them and their Weapons-of-Mass-Distortion invasion–likely want John Bolton at the Pentagon and probably pine away for Curtis LeMay. They can’t be rehabbed. It won’t matter.
What matters is that Chuck Hagel, 66, knows, among other things, the lessons of Vietnam and Iraq. Increasingly, so do most Americans who would recognize a neo-con job the second time around.