Leon Panetta, meet Harriett Miers
From the Department of What the Heck Do I Know? … color me surprised (or naive) once again.
Here I thought that Sleek Barry had made a relatively safe, solid appointment for Director of Central Intelligence in Leon Panetta, a respected former White House Chief of Staff, budget director and member of Congress … a choice that seemed well within the parameters of the tradition of generalists as public servants.
I’m thinking: here’s Barry O once again cautiously reaching out for adult leadership in a critical position, a trusted professional who knows his way around Washington and would represent the intelligence community well on the Hill and within the Administration.
But that heat I’m feeling all the way out in Loudoun County … 30 miles from the Prezelect’s temporary HQ in the Hay Adams … ain’t global warming. It’s the firestorm the Panetta appointment has set off.
Even Democrats are questioning whether Panetta has the chops to be the nation’s chief spook at a time when al Qaeda is continually probing every nook and cranny of our nation’s most sensitive areas, when nasties like Vlady Putin are overrunning and cutting off gas supplies to potential NATO partners and engaging in cyberwarfare, when the Chinese are growing their military capabilities for some reason other than the fun of it, and when bad guys like Chavez are massing trouble south of our border.
Not to mention that Barry forgot to ask “Mother May I” of all the right Hill Dem power brokers before taking a giant step forward with Panetta.
And of course, if the Democrats want trouble, their brethren on the other side of the aisle will be more than happy to oblige, pointing out Panetta’s liberal bias, his past, vocal opposition to the surveillance and interrogation tactics of the previous administration, the “political hatchet man” nature of the appointment, as Hot Air puts it, and a fear that he is being put into place not to put a seasoned hand at the CIA, but to gut the joint.
I guess I’ve missed something here, but I’m giving the Prezelect the benefit of the doubt for having enough brains not to hollow out the nation’s intelligence apparatus at a time of maximum peril. I think he just wanted a really smart guy over there.
But I’ve seen this kind of instant appointee immolation before, and it doesn’t generally end well for anyone involved (see, most recently, Harriett Miers). My guess is that this CIA choice is going to turn out to be a Flash-in-the-Panetta and that Barry O will be looking for an exit strategy in the very near future.
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