Gates to Stay on as SecDef

Change schmange:

Several officials close to President-elect Barack Obama's transition tell CNN that Defense Secretary Robert Gates is expected to stay on the job for at least the first year of the new administration.

One source called it "all but a done deal" that the announcement could come as early as next week.

...[A second] source noted that Gates could stay for longer than a year if he and Obama end up working well together.

Pros: Continuity—there are two wars going on; keeping Gates on will make Obama's transition into the Oval Office easier, especially when the economy will be demanding so much of his attention. Bipartisanship—Obama all but promised outright Republicans in his cabinet; retaining Gates subverts inevitable complaints if he failed to include any, and Gates is pretty unobjectionable as far as GOP players go.

Cons: Continuity—there are two wars going on; both have been badly managed and if there was one place Obama sought to distance himself from the former administration (and even his fellow Dems) it was on foreign policy, but keeping Gates around creates a direct connection back to Bush policy. Bipartisanship—the Dems are routinely considered by voters to be weaker on foreign policy than the GOP; retaining Gates implicitly reinforces that narrative.

My take: The primary benefit of having Biden on the ticket is his foreign policy expertise. The divided attentions issue could have been easily mitigated by designating Biden as pointperson on defense during the transition, as a Democratic defense secretary took over operations. (And would, say, Wes Clark really have had much of a learning curve, anyway?) And the whole bipartisanship for bipartisanship's sake shit is utterly lost on me, especially when it comes to defense. So, all things considered, I really don't see the upside here.

I'm not suggesting it's a total disaster, but it would not have been my first choice by a long shot.