On October 1, the president and I met privately in the Oval Office. He was sitting as usual in a wingback chair in front of the fireplace, and I was seated on the couch to his left. He grabbed an apple from the bowl on the coffee table, took a bite, and then, out of the blue, asked me who should replace Jones. He said he was looking at Donilon, General Cartwright, and Susan Rice. I said, “In the privacy of this room, I suspect Hillary would have a problem with Susan as national security adviser.” He laughed and said, “That’s well known outside of this room. Hillary’s forgiven me, but not the people who came over to me.” He then said he had read my comments about Donilon in the Woodward book and asked why I felt so negatively. I told him I had made those comments to Jones after the Afghan review and Tom’s disparaging comments about senior military officers—especially during the Haiti operation. Tom had recognized I had a problem with him and called me; we had met privately several months earlier and cleared the air: I said, “I’d be fine with Donilon as national security adviser.” I asked the president to tell Tom what I had said. Donilon and I would develop a strong, cordial working relationship, although his suspicion of the Pentagon and the military would not diminish.
I had expected to be another departee in mid-2010. The president and I originally had agreed that I would stay on about a year, and by late 2009, especially after the Afghan travail, I really wanted to leave in the spring of 2010. I intended to tell the president that, right after I returned from a Christmas holiday in the Northwest. He beat me to the punch. Obama called me into the Oval Office on December 16, 2009, the day before I was to fly west. After he shut the door, he said, “I want to talk about you. I’d like you to stay on indefinitely, but that’s probably too much to ask of your family. So I’d like you to stay at least until January 2012.” He was very generous, saying, “I honestly just don’t know where I would even begin to look for a replacement, not just [because of] the effective way you manage the Defense Department but [because of] the other skills and experience you bring to the administration.” I told him I was very flattered and that he had preempted me. I told him I had intended to propose in January that I leave at the end of May 2010. I thought we were proceeding reasonably well in Iraq, Afghanistan should be on the right track by then, and we would have completed a second year of budget reforms. “I will have done all I can do,” I said, but that I had talked to Becky and that if he said I was needed longer, I would stay until January 2011. He smiled broadly and said, “And we’ll evaluate again then.” I thought I had ended my sentence with a period, but he ended his with a comma.
That “comma” led to further discussion between us, and I eventually agreed to remain until the end of June 2011. Thinking ahead, I suspected that if I couldn’t help him identify a successor, I might get extended until after the 2012 election. And so, in the same meeting on October 1 when I supported Donilon to replace Jones, I told Obama, “I have a seed to plant in terms of my successor—Leon Panetta.” I said he had led CIA and OMB and had been White House chief of staff, so he knew how to lead big organizations; he was good with Congress; it was clear from CIA that he cared about the troops; he would continue the Defense reform effort; he would work well with the Joint Chiefs; and he was up to speed on the issues. I said I’d talked to Leon about succeeding me, and he didn’t say “Hell, no.” “I think he’d be willing to do it for eighteen months.” The president responded, “Very interesting. I hadn’t thought of that.”
Difficult allies and difficult foes were not limited to our relations abroad. I had my hands full with both in Washington, D.C., as well. For me, 2010 was a year of continued conflict and a couple of important White House double-crosses.
CHAPTER 12
Meanwhile, Back in Washington
DON’T ASK, DON’T TELL
Two thousand ten began inauspiciously for me with the president’s State of the Union address, on January 27. I absolutely hated going to this political theater. The president stands before both houses of Congress in the Capitol with packed galleries (the first lady’s box is filled with people handpicked to highlight one or another parts of the president’s message and always several uniformed military). He tells Congress and the American people that everything in the country is going—or will go—swimmingly with him as president (or at worst, “unprecedented” challenges will be tackled “boldly”) and lays out his agenda for the coming year. Major elements of the address are inevitably partisan. His supporters in Congress rise—over and over—to applaud and cheer while the opposition sits on its hands except in the rare moments when the president mentions something they like, or makes the obligatory references to the U.S. military. The Supreme Court justices sit stoically, unsmiling and almost never applauding, never standing except when the president enters and leaves. The Joint Chiefs of Staff follow the lead of the chairman in terms of whether to applaud and whether to stand. Mostly they just sit, rising and applauding only when the troops are mentioned or there is some utterly innocuous declaration about what a great country the United States is. The president’s cabinet, on the other hand, must rise with virtually every paragraph and every jab intended to outrage the opposition. I disliked doing these political deep knee bends under both Bush and Obama. Being part of a political cheering squad was embarrassing for me, especially standing to applaud highly controversial domestic initiatives and views. A close observer would have seen how often I was the last to rise and first to sit.
One such moment occurred on January 27, when the president announced toward the end of his address, “This year, I will work with the Congress and our military to finally repeal the law that denies gay Americans the right to serve the country they love because of who they are. It’s the right thing to do.” I had already agreed that repealing “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” (DADT) was the right thing to do, but in what I considered a serious breach of trust, the president had blindsided Admiral Mullen and me with this announcement, informing us of what he intended to do just the day before the speech. He dropped this bombshell without consulting with the service chiefs of staff, who would have to implement the policy change, and without allowing Mike and me time to consult the chiefs ourselves. All we could do was tell them the announcement was coming. The U.S. military leadership had adamantly opposed gays serving openly since the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” law had been enacted in 1993, and the service chiefs, if not opposed outright, continued to have strong reservations about the timing and implementation of a change to DADT. The president’s preemptive strike, perhaps intended to head off leaks from the Pentagon ahead of the State of the Union, had irked the military—and me—on this sensitive initiative.