Obama’s Pentagon-in-Waiting

[Old Eagle]

Absolutely.

The expectation/protocol is that every political appointee of the last administration will submit his/her resignation effective Inauguration Day or before. In many cases this causes a mad rush for the door, in order to get the best positions in the civilian world, pending a reversal of political fortunes. Other times, folks stay on to the bitter end.

At the beginning of the Clinton administration, new appointments were slow. In OSD, that led to the situation where Jim Locher (a known entity to both parties from his SASC days) was asked to stay on in his ASD, SOLIC position and sign secretarial-level documents as the "senior civilian official".

Bush 43 left several political ambassadors in place just to prevent too much disruption in the foreign policy arena.

I am cautiously optimistic that the early naming of intended appointees will actually stabilize the transition process.

[John T. Fishel]

that part of the discussions (negotiations) with Sec Gates involved who he was comfortable working with. I don't believe that President-elect Obama will appoint a DEPSEc or a USD who is unacceptable to Gates. Lower level political appointees may be more problematic but they will be the problems of the USDs. That said, there are a bunch of talented folk who held political appointments in the Clinton administration who would likely be very acceptable to Sec Gates.

Cheers

JohnT