Elizabeth Drew on the Chuck Hagel Firing

The world has been falling apart but former Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel took time out of his schedule to chat with reporter Elizabeth Drew.

It was time well spent.

When Hagel was unceremoniously dismissed, Drew rushed to his defense… so to speak.

In her blog post Drew portrayed Hagel as an honorable and decent man, caught in a job that was nearly undoable, unable to gain access to President Obama or to influence those who were really running foreign policy… that would be National Security Advisor Susan Rice.

Apparently Drew did not have access to Rice. Thus she says what everyone thinks about Susan Rice:

Hagel particularly chafed at the White House’s governing style on national security policy. He believed—and in this he was far from alone within and outside the administration—that national security adviser Susan Rice is in over her head. And Rice’s admittedly abrasive style put off a large number of people. But she’s been close to the president from the days of the 2008 campaign, and that appears to be what matters most to him.

An astonishing statement: Obama does not care about how well or poorly he is conducting foreign policy. He cares about who he feels close to. He does not care about competence or incompetence in high executive office. He cares about how comfortable he feels with someone.

If you were wondering why the world is going up in flames, now you know.

Drew’s short post has been highlighted for another reason, a telling error that should have been caught by a quick-witted editor.

Speaking of Hagel, Drew wrote:

While I had come to admire Hagel as a thoughtful man, there’s a question of whether anyone can make the leap from a senator’s office—with an average staff size of 34 people, to the Pentagon, the world’s largest institution, which employs about 26,000 personnel on site, plus about a half million overseas, plus an active military of about 1.5 million men and women. In general, transitions from Capitol Hill to a cabinet office, in either party, haven’t been markedly successful. The Pentagon has been a sinkhole of failures.

It did not take very much time for Instapundit to point out that if Hagel’s experience was insufficient for the Defense Department,Barack Obama’s experience was not even remotely sufficient for a commander-in-chief.

Keep in mind, Chuck Hagel had an extensive career in business. He had managed companies. He had spent a dozen years in the Senate. He knew something about the way Washington ran.

Barack Obama brought far, far less to the White House.

We are all awaiting Drew’s explanation for her implicit and inadvertent rejection of the rationale for the Obama presidency. I would lay odds that she is not a closet Republican.