Alas, the same people who insisted that Barack Obama was too passive, naive and inexperienced to defeat the ruthless team of Bill and Hillary Clinton (or the war-hero John McCain) are the ones now insisting that his choice to head the CIA, Leon Panetta, is too passive, naive and inexperienced to lead this agency “in a time of war”. But they are as wrong about Panetta as they were about Obama.
Panetta was a longtime congressman from California before he went on to earn a stellar reputation for fiscal prudence as director of the Office of Management and Budget and for political shrewdness as White House chief of staff during the Clinton administration.
And it was this reputation that led President George W. Bush to appoint him to the Iraq Study Group, a bipartisan panel that released a report at the end of 2006 with dozens of recommendations for the reversing course in the Iraq war.
No doubt it was this reputation that also led President-elect Obama to tap him to head the CIA. After all, what the agency needs now more than anything is someone with not only the management skills to transform its Cold-War orientation but also the objective mindset to correct its systemic failures, which caused America to be blind-sided on 9/11 and misled into invading Iraq.
Not to mention the need for a director with the diplomatic skills of a seasoned politician instead of one with the cloak-and-dagger skills of a seasoned spy. After all, in addition to restoring discipline and due care in the gathering of intelligence, the next director will have to help repair the damage done to America’s international reputation by CIA handiwork that led to puerile abuses at Abu Ghraib and the cowardly renditioning of terror suspects to be tortured in secret prisons by foreign agents.
For these reasons, I think Obama’s choice of Panetta is inspired!
Meanwhile, apropos political skills, I am stupefied that none of the seasoned politicians on his transition team thought to give Senator Diane Feinstein, the incoming chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, a heads up on Panetta’s appointment.
Ironically, this caused her to throw a very public hissy fit vowing to oppose it, which made Obama seem every bit as naïve and inexperienced as his critics once claimed.
But after the President-elect made an appropriately groveling apology, she issued a statement saying that she too considers his appointment of Panetta inspired.
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Iraq Study Group
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