SECURITY PICK: SLICK?

“George W. Bush spent much of last year’s pres­i­den­tial cam­paign lam­bast­ing Sen. John Kerry for view­ing ter­ror­ism as a law-​​enforcement prob­lem. Now, on the eve of his sec­ond term, Bush picks a [pros­e­cu­tor] as his coun­tert­er­ror­ism chief,” Slate’s Fred Kaplan notes.

Chertoff enters the posi­tion with a num­ber of advan­tages. Certainly he’s a far bet­ter choice than Bush’s first pick, the ill-​​starred Bernard Kerik, and more astute than his pre­de­ces­sor, Thomas Ridge. Having been vet­ted by the Senate for two pre­vi­ous jobs, he will likely sail through con­fir­ma­tion. He knows a lot about the issues and has thought about them on a high level. He knows the inner work­ings of the Justice Department and the FBI. As a U.S. attor­ney in New York and New Jersey, in the 1980s and ‘90s, he has dealt directly with local law enforce­ment.
On the other hand, he has never run a large orga­ni­za­tion, man­aged a big bud­get, or dealt with larger issues of national secu­rity, trans­porta­tion, infra­struc­ture, or tech­nol­ogy. There is also rea­son to won­der if Chertoff might wind up less a dis­pas­sion­ate ana­lyst than a par­ti­san cheer­leader. In the mid-‘90s, he worked as the Republicans’ coun­sel on Al D’Amato’s Senate Whitewater Committee. He made pub­lic appear­ances on behalf of Sen. Robert Dole’s pres­i­den­tial bid, attack­ing Clinton on moral charges that the com­mit­tee had raised (but not proved). And even in those realms of home­land secu­rity where Chertoff has clear exper­tise, his posi­tion on key issues is unclear or contradictory. 

Jeralyn Merritt and the Times have more on the nominee.

January 12th, 2005 | Homeland Security | Comments Off Both comments and pings are currently closed.