> But at the same time we -- meaning Trump and the GOP Senate -- just appointed the least qualified candidate in the history of the US, to run the most powerful military in the world?

For some context, in the last fifty years, one nominee was rejected (Towers, for drinking), one was 'close' (Hagel, 58-41), but everyone else:

> Aside from that vote and Mr. Tower’s rejection following accounts of his excessive drinking, no other secretary of defense nominee in the past 50 years has gotten fewer than 90 votes, with Leon Panetta being confirmed 100-0 in 2011. Three others — Harold Brown in 1977, Les Aspin in 1993 and Donald Rumsfeld in 2001 — sailed through on voice votes.

* https://archive.is/https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/24/us/pol...

For Hesgeth, four GOPs voted against him, and so the VP in his role as President of Senate had to break the 50-50 tie.

Getting >90 votes for SECDEF is the norm. The picks are regarded as competent and the votes have generally reflected that.

>But at the same time we -- meaning Trump and the GOP Senate -- just appointed the least qualified candidate in the history of the US...

I'm old enough to remember when Biden nominated someone with no aviation experience to lead the head of the FAA, and also had corruption charges while acting as head of the LA transit system....AND Democrats were in _favor_ of that lack of experience:

"Democrats...spinning his lack of direct involvement with aviation as a positive, theoretically making him less likely to be aligned or swayed by any of the many interest groups or companies in the industry."[1]

I'm also old enough to remember when Pete Buttigieg was appointed Transportation Secretary, despite having virtually no experience in mass transit (no, a McKinsey deck doesn't count) and whose highest office was mayor of a small Indiana town.[2]

So can we stop with the hyperbole? Yes there are many good candidates, but the US could do much worse than a guy with experience in Iraq/Afghanistan/Guantanamo + 2 Bronze Stars + Joint Commendation + 2 Army Commendations + Expert Infantryman Badge + degrees from Harvard & Princeton.[3]

[1]https://www.avweb.com/aviation-news/faa-nominee-quizzed-on-a... [2]https://www.the-independent.com/news/world/americas/us-polit... [3]https://www.aetc.af.mil/News/Article-Display/Article/4042297...

We would call those qualifications to be a Sr. Principal Engineer or higher even ... not an SVP in charge of 1M+ people. Hegseth is way out of his league.

I love how people think managing 1M people and 100 people are different. In both cases it's all delegation. You can't oversee more than 10 people in any realistic sense.

> SVP in charge of 1M+ people

it's more like CEO in charge of 3M+ people and a $850 billion annual budget (of your money)

not to mention global repercussions

Dude, none of that has _anything_ to do with being able to run a huge organization. Nothing. It’s undeniable that Hegseth, even if you ignore all of the white supremacist shit, is completely unqualified to run a large organization. Noting other folks that aren’t super qualified doesn’t change that one bit, and it’s insulting to others’ intelligence to suggest it does.

I suppose it shouldn't be but it's stunning to me the level of cognitive dissonance it takes to maintain that Trump is bringing back "meritocracy" while putting a weekend Fox News host with ZERO experience leading a large organization in charge of our military and DoD of 3 million people.

"but he served in Iraq!!" is the go-to defense of this. I was unaware that the hundreds of thousands of troops who served in Iraq are all equally qualified to lead the entire military. Seems...problematic

Your reductionist, pejorative mischaracterization of the details of this situation is also problematic.

But don't worry, there's no requirement for you to improve your cognition, only other people are obligated to do that.

Well, he's also an alcoholic sexual abuser, both of which would have DQed him 20 years ago. But, then the guy that hired Hegseth is a felon and rapist, so here we are, as a nation, mostly totally ok with the current state of affairs.

If anything, I think the characterization of the candidate's qualifications is kind, as it fails to mention any of the obvious disqualifying issues.

Out of curiosity: in your model, can something be kind and unkind simultaneously?

Your post added nothing to the conversation except insults though. I would have been interested in hearing an alternative perspective on why GP's post was reductive because as far as I know it's accurate.

>Your post added nothing to the conversation except insults though.

You are describing your experience, but stating it as if it is a universal fact.

A relevant post from this morning:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42946854

I guess I'll save a click for other readers. The post linked is completely unrelated to the subject of this thread. This person isn't interested in real conversation.

As a fan of irony, many thanks!

Ok, I think enough is enough and have banned this account.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40660693 (June 2024)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39099968 (Jan 2024)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38921687 (Jan 2024)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25830600 (Jan 2021)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22746689 (April 2020)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21068892 (Sept 2019)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20308569 (June 2019)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20157648 (June 2019)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16782569 (April 2018)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16719891 (March 2018)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16691736 (March 2018)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14973671 (Aug 2017)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13952958 (March 2017)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13199347 (Dec 2016)

Least qualified according to who? The Democrats?

It’s politics. These are political roles. It’s organizational leading and having people in place who are aligned with your goals, not splicing DNA.

And we’ve had the qualified one who got 90 Senate votes in confirmation and what did that get us? The Iraq War and the Afghan departure with abandoned locals falling off airplanes.

It’s laughable when the idea of checking the same boxes that always get checked is “qualified”.

He has zero experience running a large organization. The Secretary of Defense, while a political appointee, also requires some ability to manage a large organization, which again, he doesn’t have. And suggesting that we didn’t get the desired outcomes from another qualified candidate doesn’t mean we should switch to literally unqualified candidates. Take your partisan hat off for a few minutes and think about what qualities are necessary in a SecDef, and think about whether Hegseth meets them or not.

He was a major in the US Army, typically leading a battalion, and while not a government department, saying he has “no experience” is false.

What does a battalion leader need? Organizational ability, the ability to motivate.

He is preceded by a guy who decided to hide a serious health issue from his own boss (must have though nobody noticed Biden’s issues, so no biggie), to the point he was unreachable for days. So as long as he doesn’t do that, he’s already an improvement.

But I get it. It’s “it’s not my team so it’s bad” and then find the justification after. If the situation was flipped the Democrats would be talking up “fresh ideas” and promoting their lack of experience (Buttigieg). So I’ll just take this as politics and no actual, well thought out criticism.

He has experience in a number of positions, but I don't think it should be controversial to point out that he has little to no leadership experience leading large organizations. Hegseth left active duty the same year he was promoted to major. He was only a captain in active duty for less than three years. Captains can lead at most a company, which often have at-most 200 members, but can have less than 100. The department of defense supervises over a million.

Maybe you should read this quote from McConnell, arguably the person who did more to defeat the Democrat agenda in the past 20 years than anyone else, who, coincidentally, voted not to confirm Hesgeth.

> “Effective management of nearly 3 million military and civilian personnel, an annual budget of nearly $1 trillion, and alliances and partnerships around the world is a daily test with staggering consequences for the security of the American people and our global interests,” McConnell said in the statement. “Mr. Hegseth has failed, as yet, to demonstrate that he will pass this test. But as he assumes office, the consequences of failure are as high as they have ever been.”

The same McConnell who, after being in the Senate for 40 years, was recently praised on 60 minutes with "his greatest accomplishment is funding the Ukraine War"?

> It’s organizational leading and having people in place who are aligned with your goals, not splicing DNA.

We're talking about the DOD here, not Transportation Secretary.

And this conversation is in the context that these are the same people who are "rooting out the disease of DEI", Red Scare style, in order to "promote meritocracy".

As for whether qualified leaders got us into wars we should never have gotten into (Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, etc.) that's a whole other conversation.