Leon Panetta: An Inspired Appointment and a Class Act

President-elect Obama’s choosing  Leon Panetta to head the CIA is his most inspired appointment. Obama has had many fine appointments but the Panetta one is pitch perfect.
Obama has signaled his seriousness about making the CIA accountable. It has to follow Administration policies and not serve as its own agent. Given the world’s many danger spots–Pakistan and Afghanistan, Iran and Iraq,  Syria and Saudi Arabia, Lebanon and Egypt, Israel and Palestine– Obama’s efforts to not allow the CIA to run wild amounts to a high stakes effort. The CIA has a history of massive resistance.
Panetta, at 71, with a secure reputation, steps up, accepts responsibility and exercises leadership. Panetta’s colleagues deeply respect him. Many former House colleagues swoon in telling about his leadership qualities. Panetta knows how to wrap himself around an institution whether it’s the House of Representatives, Office of Management and Budget (OMB) or the White House. He chooses strong associates to work with, stresses team play and insists that the players say what they think. Those qualities have Panetta tracking well with Obama.
At OMB Panetta valued the ideas of civil servants. His leadership and political judgment showed that on domestic matters intelligent public policy could be shaped rather than thwarted. Serving as Chief of Staff in the Clinton White House, he brought discipline and cohesiveness to it while keeping the progressive flag flying. To argue that Panetta is inexperienced in running complex organizations, and is therefore unqualified to head the CIA, is a canard.
Panetta will use his leaderhsip qualities to draw on the wisdom of the professionals, provide Obama, and others in the government, with candid assessments that aim to develop workable policies that protect us and will keep us out of wars that morally and strategically the US shouldn’t be fighting. He will work to strengthen the CIA’s analytic capabilities. Panetta brings with him the judgment and political skills to abandon the countless CIA abuses of the Bush-Cheyney era.
Discarding those horrid practices and operations is the standard we should expect of Panetta. It will not be accomplished easily. Those of us outside of government need to be both suppoortive of Panetta’s reform efforts, and as candid with Panetta as we expect him to be in his assessments of often destabilizing situations.
Full disclosure: Panetta and I came to Washington at roughly the same time– in the early 1960s. We worked together on the great civi lrights legislation of the 1960s and all through his officlal life until he left the Clinton White House.
It’s no secret: I admire his integrity, his analytic ability, his judgment and his quality to be empathetic.