Hagel a Good Choice for SecDef

While he apparently is hauling some baggage around with him (his comments on "the Jewish Lobby", his past lack of support for LGBT issues, his Republicanism), Chuck Hagel is, on the whole, a good choice for Defense.

I've especially and immensely enjoyed the faux-outrage criticism, without even a whiff of irony, by the wingnuttery that he's "anti-gay". As has been said before, if Obama came out today for motherhood and apple pie, the Rethugs in Congress would pass a resolution against them both tomorrow.

I don't know if we've ever had a Secretary of Defense who has come out of a background that included Purple-Heart-winning ground combat as a regular grunt before, but Hagel will bring a much-needed sense of reality to the job of Secretary of Defense. And there's no reason to think that he'll go off the rails and go in a direction that his boss doesn't want him to go in.

So grab some popcorn, crack open a beer and watch the nomination fight in Congress. It's a good prelude to the one we'll see when John Kerry is nominated for Secretary of State.