Obama’s reshuffle of national security team signals challenges ahead

Posted at 05:35 PM ET, 04/28/2011

By Jonathan Bernstein

The most important thing that Barack Obama did this week — and no, it wasn’t the birth certificate sideshow — was the long-anticipated reshuffle of national security positions, featuring Leon Panetta moving from CIA to Defense and General Petraeus replacing him at CIA. But what’s particularly interesting about the moves he made is what they tell us about the national security dilemmas he faces.

Obama officially announced the selections this afternoon. I was inclined to think the selections were first-rate — I’ve long been a Panetta fan — but I was waiting to hear from Fred Kaplan before commenting, because he’s both a smart observer and because he has excellent sources within the national security establishment. Kaplan is...I don’t think “thrilled” is too strong:

[U]nder the circumstances, it’s hard to imagine a shrewder set of moves, both politically and substantively...Defense right now is] a nightmare job for anyone but Panetta has as much experience as anyone at carving out that sort of territory ... Picking Petraeus to run the CIA is a move worthy of chess masters.

Kaplan correctly identifies the problems facing the Obama Administration: First, downsizing and ending the active military commitments in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Libya without the politically damaging perception of “losing” those conflicts; and second, the prospect of real Pentagon budget cuts.

Presidential scholar Richard Neustadt talked about viable public policy needing to be “manageable to the men who must administer it, acceptable to those who must support it, tolerable to those who must put up with it, in Washington and out.”

Budget cuts mean that there’s going to be a whole lot of “put up with it.” And Panetta, with his vast experience with bureaucratic politics, particularly in the budget realm, should be good at sniffing out which cuts would be “intolerable” and which would be merely inconvenient. Meanwhile, keeping on the popular Petraeus will help the President manage the difficult politics of drawdown in Iraq and Afghanistan. He’s a nonpartisan figure who is a master of the Congressional hearing and has a great deal of credibility with the national security establishment. His presence will make it easier for everyone from generals in the field to foreign policy experts to accept the idea that each step towards withdrawal represents movement towards overall victory.

As Kaplan says, this hardly guarantees that things will magically run smoothly; the challenges are going to be difficult. But it’s a good play.

The President's Partisan Job

I have a new post up over at Greg's place agreeing with Fred Kaplan that Barack Obama made good choices in his national security reshuffle.

Two additional points. Kevin Drum highlighted one of the more interesting bits of Kaplan's article: the apparent lack of a strong "bench" in national security. It's worth mentioning that developing the party's farm team -- in both governing and electioneering -- is actually one of a president's most important partisan tasks. Not only is it important for future same-party presidents (I've talked many times about Bill Clinton's problem with finding experienced White House personnel), but it's presumably quite important for a president's second term, as well. Of course, an inattentive attitude towards executive branch staffing is not going to produce good results, there.

The second point is about Ezra Klein's question about why it's so hard to get budget cuts through the Pentagon:

This seems both perfectly plausible to me and completely insane. No one asks whether the Department of Health and Human Services will accept budget cuts, or whether the Labor Department is willing to downsize. But the Pentagon gets treated differently.

Well, yes and no. All departments and agencies, HHS included, resist budget cuts and changes to standard operating procedures; the Pentagon is just (perhaps) better at it than others. We know, certainly by reputation at least, some of why this is: contracts carefully arranged for maximum political benefit; the high esteem in which the military is held by the public, especially in wartime; the advantages of legitimate (and plausibly legitimate) secrecy. Add to that, for a Democratic president, fear of an issue "owned" by the other party, and you can see why it's hard to effect change. But the truth is that it's always hard to get the bureaucracy to go along with what the president wants.

And to tie these points together: it's presumably easier to get the bureaucracy to bend to the intent of the White House when political appointees are enthusiastic about carrying out the president's policies. Not certain, by any means; there are plenty of stories of bureaucratic capture of even the most gung-ho appointees. But easier. And for a Democratic president, it's not hard at all to find lots of enthusiastic nominees for Interior, or EPA, or Justice's Civil Rights Division. It's an important part of the president's job to develop an equally strong group in national security and other areas that might not spark quite as much natural passion.