My prediction for SecDef; Michèle Flournoy
It’s not that I’m all that smart, that I make this prediction, but reading Michèle Flournoy’s bio, she falls right in line with the President and she’d be a rubber stamp for him. According to the Washington Post in their rundown of candidates, she is the CEO of the Center for a New American Security, an organization the Post calls “a non-partisan think tank”. Yeah, they’re the guys who want to change military retirement. They’re the guys who recommended pay cuts for the troops and making out-of-pocket health care costs for retirees more expensive.
Another member of their staff is Phil Carter, a founder of IAVA and Obama’s veteran adviser during the 2008 campaign who became the Deputy Secretary of Defense for Detainee Affairs. Oh, yeah he also wrote anti-Bush propaganda in the Washington Post for a spell before making the leap to politics.
Michèle Flournoy worked at the Defense Department for Gates and Panetta, so she knows what is expected of her. Besides, we’ll need headlines about how she’s the first female Secretary of Defense to clog up the news cycle with non-news.
There are other choices, like John McHugh, the current Secretary of the Army and former Republican Congressman – Democrat Presidents love to have a Republican SecDef to blame their troubles upon. Maybus, the Navy Secretary is mentioned in the article, too.
Whoever the choice ends up being, we can be pretty sure that it won’t be someone who has the welfare of the troops, or even actual national security as their priority. The administration is looking for someone who will be the most rubber stampy.
Category: Big Pentagon
Best candidate in the article is probably Robert Work. Hopefully he’ll at least stick around if he doesn’t get promoted.
Good grief, she’s ugly enough to make shit scream and run away!
LOL! Or make a Freight Train take a Dirt Road!!
Roger That! She’d draw a blister in the bottom of a galvanized shit pot!
“First female SECDEF…”
Are you sure that’s a female?
API & TOW
She’s got that “Don’t-Ask-Don’t-Tell/Hillary” look .
/nttawwt
Yeah, I’m fairly certain that she doesn’t have any sex scandals in her history.
Shame on you…
ROFLMMFAO !!!!!
Interesting. I actually posted a comment on her about four years ago on the Small Wars Journal. I was unimpressed with her back then, don’t see any reason to change that opinion now:
“I’ll be honest, I’ve always been truly puzzled how people with a background like Flournoy’s make it to the highest levels of the Pentagon leadership. Apparently, going to Harvard, Oxford and working in think-tanks in D.C. is all you need. At least Fick and Exum were actually IN the military for a short bit, but Flournoy? If she had at least done some time in an embassy or worked for the CIA or something like that, I could at least give a little credit but nope, academic geo-political wonkery all the way (of course, all that stuff could be a cover and she’s really Mitch Rapp in a skirt. In which case, I’ll humbly apologize before she has my ass killed in my own backyard).
I know all our Assistant or Under SECDEFs can’t be like Mike Vickers, but damn, this is getting depressing….”
http://smallwarsjournal.com/blog/flournoy-us-must-stand-vigilant-in-face-of-new-threats
Can we get Mitch Rapp for Secretary and Jack Reacher (the book version, not the Tom Cruise abomination), for Under Secretary?
Is any other author going to pick up the wake of Vince Flynn’s passing?
Mitch Rapp for President, Stan Hurley for SECDEF.
“…Wwe can be pretty sure that it won’t be someone who has the welfare of the troops, or even actual national security as their priority. The administration is looking for someone who will be the most rubber stampy.”
So I assume Retired Marine General James N. Mattis would be ruled out?
I thought Chuckie was the embodiment of being rubber stampy.
What?
In all honesty, why not General Mattis? He has the intellectual cred that this administration wants, and the military cred many of us wish for.
I know why he won’t be selected, but we can dream.
Former GOs have to have been retired for 10 years before becoming a secdef, otherwise good choice.
Its the same reason people who would be great as President don’t try for the job.
He’d be successful and do a great job and not sweat the small stuff.
In this case, I wouldn’t be surprised if Barry considers him “too military” to be in charge of the military. Especially since Barry has never been in the military himself.
Which is why this woman is going to get tagged for it most likely. Shock-value is the priority, not capability.
Wish I could argue with your analysis, Jonn. Can’t.
Would agree that military experience is not necessarily a requirement, or the lack of it being an absolute deal breaker. However, it would take someone with extraordinary life experience in the civilian sector to make the cut, for me. Like a Condi Rice, for instance, because of her knowledge of all things Russian. (Not that she could/should be considered.)
At the least she was National Security Advisor, which had a large part to play with the military and its employment vs being a “think-tank ANALyst.”
It still mystifies me how people get appointed to positions with little or no experience but the rest of us have to write a resume for every job we get and compete for most of them. I fear we are rapidly removing the military from managing the military.
Anybody ever hear of a guy named Robert McNamara? How’d that work out?
“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” George Santayana
She’s the former Undersecretary of Defense for Policy. Hardly someone with little to no experience.
Writing policy and understanding the effects of that policy are two completely different things. I have a difficult time with people writing policy when they have never been the person who has to execute said policy. She may be the right person for the job, but I don’t have a lot of faith in our Government leaders choosing someone based on anything other than self interest.
I will agree with the latter. True. But knowing what I do know of her, she’s one of the few good ones. So, I’ll take her over another dipshit like Hagel any day.
I certainly don’t wish for her to fail. Nothing would make me happier than for the SecDef to actually be worth a crap for the first time in a long time. As I don’t know her I will, as always, defer judgment until I see what she is like if she is selected.
Oh, I didn’t mean to imply that you did. Promise. 🙂
I was actually surprised to hear how competent she was when she was USD Policy. There were a couple I briefed when I was there, who were a bit… uh… DUH. She was apparently one of the good ones. She turned it down because of family, which I really respect too.
I worked under her when she was USD(P). She was OK, and knew enough to hire people who knew what to do and get stuff done. And she cared intensely about her people.
For those who don’t know, OSD Policy is a “mini-DoD,” and the #3 spot in OSD. She was competent in that role. There are worse choices for SECDEF.
I will have to partially disagree with you here, Jonn. Flournoy, by all accounts, is incredibly bright, asks all the right questions, strives to understand national security issues, and will hardly be a rubberstamp for anything. This is according to people who were her briefers in the past – card carrying Republicans, by the way. She should have been the top pick for the spot, and according to what I know, she was, but she declined the candidacy, because her kids were pretty young at the time, and she wanted to spend time with them. She has a stellar reputation in the IC. I would be thrilled to have her as SECDEF.
Well, considering the train wreck that is DoD “policy” these days, I’d probably soft-pedal her stint as Undersecretary if I was one of her supporters. As for experience, being the Undersecretary of anything in the Pentagon does not qualify as military, diplomatic or intel-related experience in my book.
She is an academic, full stop. I’m sure she is technically more intelligent than me, but consider this: graduates from Yale and Harvard have been running everything in this country, including the presidency, since Ronald Reagan. How has that worked out? Pure academic performance is not, rumors to the contrary, that great of an indicator of a leader’s quality.
As for the being lauded by “card-carrying Republicans”…care to name some names? And believe me, there are plenty of “card-carrying Republicans” that I wouldn’t trust further than I could throw them, so that wouldn’t reflect much credit upon Flournoy in any case.
I’m not saying that Mrs. Flournoy isn’t a good person, a great mom or an outstanding American citizen. I am saying that she strikes me as just the kind of academic ace that has plagued the DoD since the end of the Second World War. She is another “Whiz Kid” that would fit right in with the young brainiacs that Robert F’in McNamara unleashed on the Pentagon back in the 1960s. Apparently, we learned nothing from that sorry decade…
She hasn’t been at the Pentagon for several years. That’s one. She is, in fact, an academic. However, she’s also very bright and was very highly regarded when she was there. As for “naming some names” of people I respect very much who actually laud her – you wouldn’t know any of them. One of them was her PDB briefer, and is currently my boss. I’m not in the habit of publishing names of IC colleagues. You’ll just have to take my word for it… or not. That’s entirely up to you. I can only tell you what I know from people with direct and daily access to her. You can allow politics to blind you and not take her skills and her abilities for what they are. Be my guest. *shrug*
I’m not letting politics blind me to anything, I would say the exact same thing if she was the director of the Heritage Foundation and was more conservative than Barry Goldwater.
This whole conversation is giving me deja vu. People said the exact same thing back when Sheila Widnall was being confirmed as SECAF. Widnall has a whole raft full of advanced degrees and is probably the smartest Secretary the Air Force ever had. She also had zero military experience and seemed oblivious to the non-technical aspect of military aviation. Unfortunately, her stellar academic credentials and superior intellect didn’t prevent her from doing a completely inept job handling the Kelly Flinn scandal, the Kobar Towers scandal, the Blackhawk shootdown in Iraq scandal, etc… She was in the wrong job, they should have put her in charge of DARPA or something similar.
I may be wrong, Flournoy may be the greatest SECDEF since George Marshall…but I guess we can revisit this thread in four years and see who was right….
We are going into 15 years on war footing with no end in sight, seems to me an academic insider as SecDef isn’t the highest qualification desired but at least she has a sound background in counter insurgency, er, asymmetrical warfare, er, irregular warfare or whatever the geniuses who sit and think are calling it today.
She is the CEO of a corporation heavily tied to the current administration and its policies and she is a Washington insider who has obviously been infected like the rest with whatever brain disease that seems to do around that place.
If she is such a policy genius why is virtually our entire foreign policy such a failure? If she is part of the policy she is a failure, if she is not being listened to now what will change if she is SecDef?
The current crop in its entirety are abject failures no matter the party…time for some new blood.
Dr. F had her run ins with the insiders at the NSC and White House during her time at usdp. She was also involved with policy during Arab spring (not something I’d like to face at a republican confirmation hearing).
While she is a serious candidate (and I can personally attest to her intelligence), I’m inclined to bet towards one of the candidates who have managed large organizations with real budget responsibilities.
As an aside,
How many of the joint chiefs get replaced this year? Amos just left and I believe there are several others in the next 8 to 10 months who are due to depart.
Well at least your personal knowledge is a little more encouraging but I am still going to hope for an outsider with a military background.
As a Former Marine, I do not consider Gen Amos a loss either as Commandant or as a member of the Joint Chiefs.
I said she was intelligent, it wasn’t an endorsement.
There are literally shitloads of smart/intelligent people in Washington.
Doesn’t make them the right choice for the times, environment, or the specific job.
Is Sheila Jackson Lee busy? Just kidding! But I wouldn’t put ANY dumb ass choice past Obama.
I wonder if she is any relation or married to the AFRC 4th Air Force Commander Flournoy.
My hope:
Someone in uniform who I worked with was on her staff and loved her. That alone is enough for me to think that she’d be a horrible choice.
Ollie North?
I would almost guarantee she’ll be the nominee. I’ve never met her nor worked for her but a few guys I trust tell me she’s very smart and knows the issues, I’m NOT saying that translates into running “the building.” I think she’ll be seen by Valeria Jarett and Susan Rice as someone they can dominate.
The Chairman General Dempsey is up for replacement in 2015, stand by for General or Admiral Milquetoast.
Having to deal with Jarett and Rice, as well as a Republican Congress, might be reason enough to pass now and wait for a potential Hillary administration where she will be the alpha (insert canine noun of your choice).
Anyone who agrees to work for the Golfer in Mom Jeans and anyone who agrees to work with the Golfer in Mom Jeans is a rat bastard. No exceptions.
Here she comes, here comes Les Aspin 2, she’s a demon on wheels . . . . . .
Looks like she’s no longer an option.
She’s pulled herself out of the running
(I actually heard this on the radio last evening but the WaoPo just posted this, this morning.)
“Flournoy, who co-founded the Center for a New American Security and currently serves as its chief executive officer, wrote in a letter to her board of directors that the needs of her family prevented her from taking the job, according to a person who received the letter.”
http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/checkpoint/wp/2014/11/25/michele-flournoy-says-she-doesnt-want-to-lead-pentagon/?hpid=z5
One of the more serious “No” responses I’ve seen in Washington. She used both barrels; health issues and a desire to spend more time with the family.
Although there appears to be a caveat that both of her children will be out of the nest by 2016.