[flagged]
I'm old enough to remember when Biden nominated someone with no aviation experience to lead the head of the FAA, and also had corruption charges while acting as head of the LA transit system....AND Democrats were in _favor_ of that lack of experience:
"Democrats...spinning his lack of direct involvement with aviation as a positive, theoretically making him less likely to be aligned or swayed by any of the many interest groups or companies in the industry."[1]
I'm also old enough to remember when Pete Buttigieg was appointed Transportation Secretary, despite having virtually no experience in mass transit (no, a McKinsey deck doesn't count) and whose highest office was mayor of a small Indiana town.[2]
So can we stop with the hyperbole? Yes there are many good candidates, but the US could do much worse than a guy with experience in Iraq/Afghanistan/Guantanamo + 2 Bronze Stars + Joint Commendation + 2 Army Commendations + Expert Infantryman Badge + degrees from Harvard & Princeton.[3]
[1]https://www.avweb.com/aviation-news/faa-nominee-quizzed-on-a... [2]https://www.the-independent.com/news/world/americas/us-polit... [3]https://www.aetc.af.mil/News/Article-Display/Article/4042297...
it's more like CEO in charge of 3M+ people and a $850 billion annual budget (of your money)
not to mention global repercussions
For some context, in the last fifty years, one nominee was rejected (Towers, for drinking), one was 'close' (Hagel, 58-41), but everyone else:
> Aside from that vote and Mr. Tower’s rejection following accounts of his excessive drinking, no other secretary of defense nominee in the past 50 years has gotten fewer than 90 votes, with Leon Panetta being confirmed 100-0 in 2011. Three others — Harold Brown in 1977, Les Aspin in 1993 and Donald Rumsfeld in 2001 — sailed through on voice votes.
* https://archive.is/https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/24/us/pol...
For Hesgeth, four GOPs voted against him, and so the VP in his role as President of Senate had to break the 50-50 tie.
Getting >90 votes for SECDEF is the norm. The picks are regarded as competent and the votes have generally reflected that.
It’s politics. These are political roles. It’s organizational leading and having people in place who are aligned with your goals, not splicing DNA.
And we’ve had the qualified one who got 90 Senate votes in confirmation and what did that get us? The Iraq War and the Afghan departure with abandoned locals falling off airplanes.
It’s laughable when the idea of checking the same boxes that always get checked is “qualified”.
What does a battalion leader need? Organizational ability, the ability to motivate.
He is preceded by a guy who decided to hide a serious health issue from his own boss (must have though nobody noticed Biden’s issues, so no biggie), to the point he was unreachable for days. So as long as he doesn’t do that, he’s already an improvement.
But I get it. It’s “it’s not my team so it’s bad” and then find the justification after. If the situation was flipped the Democrats would be talking up “fresh ideas” and promoting their lack of experience (Buttigieg). So I’ll just take this as politics and no actual, well thought out criticism.
> “Effective management of nearly 3 million military and civilian personnel, an annual budget of nearly $1 trillion, and alliances and partnerships around the world is a daily test with staggering consequences for the security of the American people and our global interests,” McConnell said in the statement. “Mr. Hegseth has failed, as yet, to demonstrate that he will pass this test. But as he assumes office, the consequences of failure are as high as they have ever been.”
We're talking about the DOD here, not Transportation Secretary.
And this conversation is in the context that these are the same people who are "rooting out the disease of DEI", Red Scare style, in order to "promote meritocracy".
As for whether qualified leaders got us into wars we should never have gotten into (Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, etc.) that's a whole other conversation.