President-elect Donald Trump may have made a mistake in choosing Fox News personality Pete Hegseth as secretary of Defense. However, the nomination merits an open mind.
Hegseth is a problematic choice. He isn’t as ludicrous or insulting a selection as former Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz for attorney general, former Democratic Hawaii Rep. Tulsi Gabbard for director of National Intelligence, or Robert F. Kennedy Jr. for secretary of Health and Human Services, but he isn’t ideal.
Still, it is only if Trump nominates and the Senate confirms the right deputy secretary and key undersecretaries for the Pentagon that Hegseth might be worth a risk as a change agent.
Consider Hegseth’s drawbacks first. On paper, he doesn’t fit ordinary ideals of “qualifications.” His two Bronze Stars for military service are impressive but are hardly rare. More than 100,000 were awarded for Operation Iraqi Freedom alone. As leader of two veterans-related groups, he was on the right side of policy changes advocated by Republicans, but they weren’t veterans-service organizations. They were political-action groups.
For 10 years, Hegseth has been a Fox News talking head. During the pandemic, he accused Democrats of “rooting for coronavirus to spread. They’re rooting for it to grow” and said the Omicron variant was a mere ploy by Democrats that would pop up every other October to help the party in elections. Those are not statements of someone of sober judgment.
Hegseth’s military service merits praise, but as someone whose highest rank was “major,” just as he was retiring, he has no high-level management experience, especially not at a stratus of policy or large-scale systems administration. To the extent that the defense secretary has quasi-diplomatic responsibilities, Hegseth has shown no inclination for nuance or teamwork.
Finally, the disputed allegation that Hegseth committed sexual assault is more worrisome than his supporters acknowledge. Even if his version is accurate, the details are sleazy. Both he and the woman in question agreed that sexual congress was consummated. It occurred — get this — after the woman led him back to his room to keep him from his “pushy” propositioning of other women at a conference bar. His own attorney said Hegseth’s extreme drunkenness that evening was his best defense because his state supposedly meant he could not have been the aggressor. A few years later, upon being served with a civil suit, Hegseth paid the woman a settlement because, his lawyer said, he feared the publicity would cost him his job at Fox. In other words, he was innocent but succumbed to what the conservative outlet Newsmax called “blackmail.”
All of this occurred two months after Hegseth’s second wife divorced him because of the birth of his child to his Fox-producer mistress, on whom he, in turn, drunkenly cheated with the woman who accused him of assault.
This brings to mind the last time a nominee for defense secretary was rejected by the Senate. In 1989, former Republican Texas Sen. John Tower was thought unfit for the job, despite his long expertise as a defense-policy specialist, because of his boozing and womanizing. Part of the concern about Tower was that his messy personal life made him susceptible to blackmail.
Booze, women, blackmail. All are present with Hegseth.
This looks bad. On the other hand, incoming presidents are accorded the benefit of small doubts about key nominees. Hegseth’s decade-plus of armed service, even if not high-level, still makes him familiar with military regimens and servicemen’s concerns. His high intelligence, with a Princeton University undergraduate degree and a possibly relevant Master of Public Policy from Harvard University, demonstrates high-level conceptual abilities of the sort needed at the Pentagon.
Hegseth has been rightly outspoken in saying military recruitment is at dangerously low levels partly because of Pentagon obsessions with “woke” identity politics, which counter the “warrior ethos” and esprit de corps. He is well suited to advocate the “grunt” over the hidebound incompetence of some of today’s “brass.”
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The big question is whether Hegseth has the tools to be more than a verbal bomb thrower and can be a serious reformer who is able to manage the immense department, improve efficiency and readiness, and enhance the nation’s war-fighting capabilities. To do so, he will need top underlings with the skill sets and experience he manifestly lacks. He needs people with high-level Pentagon experience. He needs an expert, regardless of political party, in weapons procurement and military contracting to root out horrific and culpably expensive waste. He needs steady characters who can harness his tendency toward bombast.
The Senate should see who Trump nominates for those deputy spots. It should question Hegseth strenuously and pointedly. Senators should, in short, be notably skeptical. But not, at least not yet, entirely dismissive.