A General over the Pentagon

At this point we know that retired Marine General "Mad Dog" Mattis is going to be Donald Trump's nominee to be the Secretary of Defense.  That's a pretty interesting selection, one that has gotten a lot of attention and a lot of praise from military folks, active and retired.

It is also one that will take a two-stage approval process, in that Gen. Mattis has not been retired, and thus separated from the military, for long enough to qualify for the seven-year gap required under the applicable 1947 law as later amended.  So Congress will first have to grant a waiver for Mattis to be considered, and thereafter they will need, at least the Senate will need, to approve the selection and confirm him.

The most significant thing about the appointment of Mattis is precisely that, the fact that his was a career spent in uniform.  That is a significant departure from the norm; a civilian, or at least someone whose uniformed service was a relatively brief part of his career, has been the Secretary of Defense for most of my lifetime.

So we have to take a look at this nomination on two different levels; aside from simply evaluating the candidacy of James Mattis the human being, we also have to look at the very notion of a military man -- and Lord knows Mattis is a "military man" -- to oversee the Pentagon.

Donald Trump, our president-elect, has been a rule-breaker and a trendsetter throughout his campaign and now into his appointments to the Cabinet.  That makes it a bit ironic that selecting a retired general to run the Pentagon is not so much an unusual option, as a logical option that has been avoided as a matter of custom.

So I think that the appointment of Gen. Mattis, stirring as it is among the uniformed services, is going to have to be one that capitalizes on his deep and thorough knowledge of the military he is going to have to fix.

You see, the Pentagon -- and by that I mean all the services and the civilian and contractor forces that support the military -- is in serious need of reform from two directions.

First, of course, is that our military has deteriorated, both in equipment and in morale, after eight years of Barack Obama's incompetent oversight of our foreign policy.  Mattis, it should be noted, is not the only flag officer to have retired out of frustration with not being allowed to do his job and not being listened to.  The military needs to be rebuilt, which costs money.

Second is the opposite side, which is to say that the military has shown a propensity to waste a lot of taxpayer dollars.  I can certainly speak from experience when I say that the military's capability in acquisition is often atrocious, and frequently incompetent.  That it can take years to get a simple request for proposal out the door to be bid on, is the clearest evidence possible.

Mattis has the curious obligation, assuming his confirmation, to have to figure out how to spend a lot less in acquisition costs and mistakes, and a lot more in restoration of warfighting capabilities.  Any Secretary of Defense appointee would face the same twin, opposing dictates.  This is why I believe that it is appropriate to have the person who needs to oversee that being someone intimately familiar with the problems and, at the same time, possessed of both the stature and respect of his peers, and the recognition of the problems to be solved.

James Mattis appears to have those skills and attributes in spades.  I do believe that in the subsequent administrations, appointments as Secretary of Defense will be greatly affected by Gen. Mattis -- excuse me, Secretary Mattis -- and what he is able to accomplish.  We have had previous secretaries be lifelong bureaucrats, congressmen and senators, businessmen and the like.  It will be quite something to see what a retired general does in his term, and how he actually performs when working for a president who was a businessman first and always.

I will tell you that I find the military's acquisition problems to be almost as troublesome as its equipment aging, and I will be fascinated to see if the fact of the background of the president influences the focus of his Secretary of Defense more than might otherwise be expected.

I defer, in part, to the number of rave reviews the appointment has gotten from those who have served with the general and those who are sufficiently familiar with his track record.

OK, I'll say what I mean.  I can't wait until Mad Dog hits the Pentagon.

Copyright 2016 by Robert Sutton
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