The Post reports: “President-elect Joe Biden plans to tap retired Gen. Lloyd J. Austin III to be secretary of defense, according to three officials familiar with the decision. If confirmed, Austin would be the first Black Pentagon chief.” Despite Austin’s fine military credentials, the nomination will “prompt a congressional debate over whether enough lawmakers would support a waiver from a law that mandates any service member must be out of uniform for at least seven years before being eligible to serve as defense secretary.”
In 2017, after Donald Trump had nominated retired Gen. Jim Mattis to be defense secretary, 16 Democratic senators and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) voted against the waiver of the law meant to preserve the principle of civilian control of the military. Ranking Democrat on the Armed Services Committee Jack Reed (R.I.), who voted for the waiver, vowed at the time that he would never do so again. In the House, only 36 Democrats supported the waiver.
There was a rationale for waiving the seven-year rule for Mattis: Fear. President Trump was (and still is) a loose cannon, inclined to act impulsively and for personal gain. He had spouted off about reintroducing torture and bombing the wives and children of terrorists (a war crime). Mattis was the man thought best able to interpose himself between Trump and a national security disaster. If the Constitution is not a suicide pact, then neither is the ban on generals helming the Defense Department.
What soon became apparent, however, was that Trump ultimately did whatever he wanted. He not only appointed Mattis but also two other retired generals — H.R. McMaster as national security adviser and John Kelly as homeland security secretary (and later White House chief of staff). The norm-breaking and blurring of civilian and military control and these officials’ excessive deference to authority — even after they left office, when they could have warned the country about Trump’s dangerous conduct — reminded us that the norm against military leaders in civilian positions is there for a reason.
Two respected House Democrats promptly registered their disapproval of the Austin pick. “I have deep respect for General Lloyd Austin. We worked together on Iraq when he commanded U.S. forces there, when he was vice chief of the Army, and when he was the CENTCOM commander,” wrote Rep. Elissa Slotkin (D-Mich.), a veteran of the CIA, in a statement on Twitter. “But choosing another recently retired general to serve in a role that is designed for a civilian just feels off. The job of defense secretary is purpose-built to ensure civilian oversight of the military.” She added that “after the last 4 years, civil-military relations at the Pentagon definitely need to be rebalanced. General Austin has had an incredible career — but I’ll need to understand what he and the Biden Administration plan to do to address these concerns before I can vote for his waiver.”
Rep. Tom Malinowski (D-N.J.) likewise commented:
We spent the last four years violating such norms. I would need to hear an extremely strong case from the Biden administration for the necessity of General Austin's appointment at this moment to consider further eroding this one.
— Tom Malinowski (@Malinowski) December 8, 2020
Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) has indicated he would oppose a waiver. Notable Never Trumpers who supported Biden are also weighing in. Eliot A. Cohen writes in the Atlantic:
[An] amendment for Mattis was warranted because the United States had just elected a malignant narcissist, ignorant of just about all matters required for sound conduct of the national defense, and totally lacking in respect for the boundaries that must circumscribe presidential use of the armed forces.There is no such emergency now. Austin may have been a perfectly fine general, but there are others as well or better qualified to serve as secretary of defense—Michèle Flournoy, for example, or Jeh Johnson, both deeply versed in national-security matters and of a temperament and disposition to lead the Department of Defense well.
Cohen praises the rest of the Biden national security team and adds, “Having made good choices for national security adviser and secretary of state, it is a pity that the president-elect has made such a fundamental blunder. ... It would be a bitter irony for an incoming administration to strike a different kind of blow at the democratic norms that it is so clearly, in other domains, keen to recover and restore.”
One of the critical jobs of the Biden administration is to restore norms knocked down by the Trump administration and to set an example for fellow Democrats to put country before partisan concerns. Austin’s nomination damages both efforts and puts Democrats in the uncomfortable spot of choosing principle or loyalty to the new president. We have seen this movie before.
However this nomination came about, it is a mistake. And it’s a particularly noticeable one, given Biden’s flock of smart and savvy nominations. The Biden team should rethink its choice, and if not, House and Senate Democrats should hold the line, making clear that unlike Republicans, they actually stand for democracy-preserving norms.
Read more: