Obama Sees What Works, Sticks With It

The best thing George W. Bush ever did as President was to fire his Defense Secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, and to replace him with Robert Gates (above). This is, of course, faint praise, as it simultaneously brings to mind the worst thing that he ever did, which was to hire Rumsfeld in the first place. Dubya compounded that error by sticking with Rumsfeld for the first six years of his Presidency, making it impossible to recover during the last two.

Yet Gates did almost exactly that. Now expected to continue at Defense during the early months of the Obama Administration, Gates is a pragmatist who reminds us how capable and well-trained the American foreign-policy establishment really is. Our diplomats and strategists work best when not bound by an ideology that simplistically maps the world into good vs. evil. "Success," Gates offered in his famous "Soft Power" speech at K-State a year ago, "will be less a matter of imposing one's will and more a function of shaping behavior--of friends, adversaries, and most importantly, the people in between."

It could be that the Gates appointment was not actually Bush's idea, that he was grafted onto the Administration at the behest of a wise old guard of policymakers who simply could no longer abide rampant incompetence. Dubya has since demonstrated that he still capable of stifling reasoned debate and nuanced judgment; witness the resignation last spring of Admiral William Fallon as the head of U.S. Central Command in the Middle East. Fallon, incidentally, states in a recent Boston Globe interview that the war in Iraq is "essentially over." Perhaps Gates was able to clean up Rumsfeld's mess after all.