STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
President-elect Trump's cabinet choices include the man we will discuss next, Pete Hegseth, the nominee for secretary of defense, who is a veteran, although he's better known as a Fox News weekend host and author of a book criticizing Pentagon policies. How does that match up with the requirements for the job?
Retired Marine Corps Colonel Mark Cancian is watching all of this. He's with the Center for Strategic & International Studies, a think tank here in Washington. He joins us via Skype. Good morning, sir.
MARK CANCIAN: Good morning. Thanks for having me on the show.
INSKEEP: What makes secretary of defense an especially challenging assignment?
CANCIAN: There are a couple of things that make this a uniquely difficult organization to run. The first, you have 3 million employees, including active duty, reservists and civilians. You have a $850 billion budget. You have a highly educated officer corps and senior civilians, and then you have a board of directors. It's 535-strong, each one of whom...
INSKEEP: (Laughter).
CANCIAN: ...Thinks that they should, you know, be running the show.
INSKEEP: Exactly.
CANCIAN: So...
INSKEEP: Members of Congress - it makes sense. And those numbers you give, the 3 million employees, reminds me there have been some brilliant and experienced administrators over the years - Robert McNamara in the 1960s, Donald Rumsfeld in the early 2000s - who had strong opinions, wanted to do things, and they were just completely eaten up by the job.
CANCIAN: It's a tough job. It's particularly difficult if you want to impose your vision. You have to have both determination and dexterity - know how to use the levers of power.
INSKEEP: Well, there have been some defenses of Pete Hegseth, saying, you know, hey, OK, he's a television host, but he's also a veteran. He's received bronze stars for valor in combat. He also had this elite education - Princeton, Harvard. Does he seem qualified to you?
CANCIAN: I'm going to let the Senate decide whether he's qualified. I will say that he is the least well prepared nominee in DOD's history. He has superb military qualifications. He was an excellent junior officer, but he was a junior officer. He doesn't have experience at the top levels of national security. He's never run a large organization. He doesn't have the political connections to Capitol Hill that a secretary needs to get his agenda through.
And he seemed to have a good relationship with the White House, which is important, but it's a very recent relationship. He doesn't have a deep, long-standing relationship with the president. So he goes in with a lot of challenges.
INSKEEP: He has said flatly that women should not be in combat, which is a change in recent years at the Pentagon, has been a critic of the Pentagon's diversity efforts, which the president-elect also is. When you talk to people in the military, do they feel that efforts at diversity have gotten in the way of war-fighting?
CANCIAN: Well, that depends on how they implement their efforts - anti-woke efforts, as they describe them. Hegseth has said that he wants a military leadership that focuses on excellence, accountability, meritocracy, lethality and readiness. Now, if he would - made that as a statement at the Pentagon, everyone would cheer because that's what everyone wants a military leadership to focus on.
On the other hand, if he's going to have a review panel for senior generals, then he's going to go to war with the Pentagon. On women in combat, he was much more nuanced - I mean, still controversial, but he was talking about women on the front lines...
INSKEEP: Right.
CANCIAN: ...In physically demanding positions.
INSKEEP: Right. Understand. Understand. So could be a lot of debates ahead. Colonel Mark Cancian helps us to kick those off. He's a senior adviser with the Center for Strategic and International Studies - appreciate your insights.
CANCIAN: Thanks for having me on the show. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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