All hail Hamre?

Posted By Thomas E. Ricks Tuesday, November 9, 2010 - 2:00 PM Share

I hear, second hand from the White House, that former deputy Defense Secretary John Hamre is the leading candidate to succeed Gates as secretary of defense next summer. He's one of the best people I've ever heard talk about the politics of defense spending, so he may be just what President Barack Obama wants to trim defense spending.

If Hamre blows up on the launching pad, former Navy Secretary Richard Danzig is also under consideration.

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RUBBER DUCKY

7:29 PM ET

November 9, 2010

Hamre or Danzig

Two aces.

SOLDIERSDIARY

8:56 PM ET

November 9, 2010

another

you were spot on with Petreus in Afghanistan...any word on Michele Flournoy?

BILL KELLER

10:34 PM ET

November 9, 2010

maybe the divinity school will be of most use for Hamre

"According to Army criminal investigators, the killings began two months after Gibbs joined the unit in November and began bragging about how easy it had been for him to get away with "stuff" during a previous deployment in Iraq. The Army has subsequently re-opened an investigation into a 2004 incident in which Gibbs and other soldiers are alleged to have fired on an unarmed Iraqi family riding in a car, killing two adults and one child." Wash Post Stryker Trials

Army still has a brigand ethos from the shock and awl days...Casey might want to resign.

UNICORN

11:11 PM ET

November 9, 2010

Hamre

John is absolutly terrific,with great intellectual depth and gavitas. He knows the building and its money, has closely observed the current uniformed leadershp since their formative years, and like Gate,s has a global context to his thinking. To my mind there is none better. But my dark horse isRray Mabus, the Nacvy Secretary. Unicorn

CENTIPEDE

12:53 AM ET

November 10, 2010

Hamre and Danzig

In 1999, Hamre and Danzig rode USS HAWKBILL (SSN 666) for an overnight trip in the Arctic Ocean when I was onboard.

Both were very personable and very obviously enjoyed dealing with the deckplate Sailor.

One point about Danzig - he didn't like sleeping in the submarine rack in stateroom 2, and rook his mattress out to sleep on the deck. SEN Robb of Virginia, who was in the upper rack, "stomped on him" when he was getting out. Deputy Secretary Hamre liked to tell this story of Congress stomping on the Navy.

RAYFIN3

5:26 PM ET

November 10, 2010

company man

No doubt a brilliant guy, but sounds like a company man to me (see his testimony from 1995 when there was talk about a balanced budget amendment. And those were the fat years of substantial federal tax receipts.) http://www.defense.gov/speeches/speech.aspx?speechid=819

I’m guessing that whoever replaces Gates will have to adopt the corporate strategy of the Somalia pirate. With our government running the currency printing presses 24/7, with workers who are less competitive on a global scale, and that a political system stuck in perpetual gridlock, conflict will increasingly appear to be a possible ‘solution.’

This country possesses the greatest military force the planet has ever seen, and global security looks like a growth industry. We may not be smarter, but we are certainly more powerful, and given that addictions are stronger than noble aspirations, we will likely find the necessary pretexts to preserve our consumptive way of life. Indeed, if you listen carefully, you can already hear the cries of the 2012 demagogues about ‘restoring America’s honor.’ Until the dollar reaches the value of the Weimar deutschmark or the Russian ruble of the 1990s, these folks are not about to discuss defense cuts.

RALPH HITCHENS

7:02 PM ET

November 10, 2010

Is being knowledgeable (in depth) on Defense enough?

Besides, who'd run CSIS if he moves across the river?

Seriously, no doubt he's a great choice on paper. But I was fooled in the opposite direction by Gates -- we knew him in the IC as one of the last of the Cold War hawks, and I had low expectations when he took office. But he proved surprisingly able to make the hard choices, more so than his predecessors, probably because he had relatively little equity in the military-industrial complex. Hamre, though, could be up to his ears in the aforementioned complex. And do we know if he can make the hard decisions, fire guys wearing four stars, slash into sacred cows? I hope so.