The Transformer

Bob Gates never thought he'd be Barack Obama's defense secretary. Now, in an exclusive interview, the most revolutionary Pentagon leader since Robert McNamara tells FP why he said yes, when he'll get out of Washington, and what legacy he hopes to leave behind.

Late in 2007, a year into his tenure as George W. Bush's secretary of defense and just over a year before the end of Bush's second term as president, I asked Robert Gates if he'd thought of staying on in the next administration. Many Republicans and Democrats were hoping he would, seeing him as a moderate professional sweeping away the shambles left by his predecessor, Donald Rumsfeld. But Gates seemed uninterested, even hostile to the notion. "The circumstances under which I would do that," he replied, "are inconceivable to me."

Over the next several months, he repeated the line to other inquiring journalists. He carried around a key chain with an electronic screen that counted down the number of days until he could leave Washington (a city he clearly disliked) and retire with his wife to their lakeside home in the Pacific Northwest.

And yet, when President-elect Barack Obama asked him to remain at the Defense Department's helm, Gates instantly agreed.

This summer, sitting in his spacious third-floor office in the Pentagon's E Ring, I asked him why. How was he persuaded to commit an "inconceivable" act? Gates confessed (and "confess" is the word he used) that his sighs of longing to leave in the months leading up to the 2008 election were part of a "covert action" to convince everyone that he didn't want to stay, in the hopes that nobody would ask him to. "I really didn't want to be asked," he said. But, he added, that was because all along he knew "that if I were asked, I would say, 'Yes.' In the middle of two wars, kids out there getting hurt and dying, there was no way that I was going to say, 'No.'"

Continues @ ForeignPolicy.com

------------------------------

Read @ WashingtonPost.com

Robert Gates's latest efforts at reforming the Pentagon are modest. He is not trying to cut the defense budget; he merely wants to increase efficiency while reducing bureaucracy, waste and duplication. The savings he is trying to achieve are perfectly reasonable: $100 billion over five years, during which period the Pentagon would spend approximately $3.5 trillion. And yet he has aroused intense opposition from the usual suspects -- defense contractors, lobbyists, the military bureaucracy and hawkish commentators. He faces spirited opposition from his own party, but it is the other Republicans, not Gates, who are abandoning their party's best traditions in defense strategy.

Can anyone seriously question Gates's ideas on the merits? He has pointed out that the spiraling cost of defense hardware has led to the absurdity of destroyers that cost $2 billion to $3 billion per ship and bombers that cost $2 billion per plane. He notes that while the private sector has eliminated middle management and streamlined organization charts, the Pentagon has multiplied its layers of bureaucracy. A decade ago, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld complained that there were 17 levels of staff between him and a line officer. Gates guesses that there are now about 30.

Gates has proposed initial reforms that include dismantling one command and eliminating 50 generals. To put this in context, we have almost 1,000 generals and admirals, a number that has grown 13 percent in 15 years, even as the armed forces have shrunk. Every layer of Pentagon bureaucracy is much larger than it was at the height of the Cold War. Paul Light of New York University's Wagner School of Public Service notes that in 1960 we had 78 deputy assistant secretaries of defense. There are 530 today. Gates likes to point out that there are more musicians in U.S. military marching bands than members of the Foreign Service. In fact, the Pentagon has 10 times as many accountants as there are Foreign Service officers.

Continues @ WashingtonPost.com

================================

I think it is indeed remarkable that Secretary Bob Gates is taking such bold and unprecedented steps to clean up/rehab the Pentagon.

When I first heard about it over the weekend over Zakaria' GPS show on CNN, I wondered if Pres.Obama might ask this conservative to be his runningmate in 2012 - it would be quite a change indeed... and if so what would be the reaction. Any thoughts on this? Thanks.

I would be delighted if Hillary ran and asked Gates to be her runningmate, his party affiliation notwithdranding.