Secretary Robert Gates was surprised by the President being awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom one day before he left the Pentagon – and a storied career in public service – behind him for good.  With a gracious acceptance and a joke that the President has gotten “good at this covert ops stuff,” the Secretary may have been genuinely surprised by the move, but if anything what surprised him the most was that he was still even there at all.  When Secretary Gates agreed to be the Secretary of Defense in the waning months of the Bush Administration, he did so hoping to retire with the end of the Administration.  Yet, President Obama reached out to the man asking him to stay on for a year, overseeing the transition between two highly polarizing administrations expertly in a time of war and crisis. 

With Dr. Gates marking the end of his 35-year public service career, the new Secretary of Defense – former CIA head Leon Panetta – reported for duty and already the pressure is on.  He spent the 4^th of July making calls to servicemembers, the rest of the tasks on his to-do list are not as easy or heartwarming.  Fresh off of the successful operation that resulted in the death of Osama Bin Laden, Panetta has been tasked with reducing the Defense budget by $400 billion in little more than a decade.  This request comes at a time when the election season for 2012 has started already and the budget and the deficit is the current hot-button issue. 

For example, embattled former Secretary of Defense (twice over) Donald Rumsfeld wrote an appeal in the Wall Street Journal advising Secretary Panetta to ignore that request.  Despite being largely silent about these matters while Dr. Gates, his replacement, was still behind the desk, this essay is filled less with advice but political hyperbole and no real substance.  For example, he claims that “ if President Obama tomorrow brought home each and every troop in Iraq and Afghanistan, tore down the Pentagon, shuttered the CIA and the national security agencies of government, and pink-slipped the three million men and women defending the country, it would not solve America’s financial woes.”  And while on the surface is this a true statement, no one has suggested that and such rhetoric contains no real advice to the Secretary from one of his predecessors. 

Panetta also faces two wars, whatever it is we are doing in Libya, and will have to certify (and then deal with any fallout from) the removal of the Don’t-Ask-Don’t-Tell policy.  He will be tasked to not only see our troops home from war, but also to reshape the military and doing so in such a way that doesn’t drastically reduce troop levels or make us appear weaker.  He has his work cut out for him.