It may not just be former Senator Chuck Hagel’s policy stances that sink him, but also his personality flaws. Nominated senators are usually easy confirmations thanks to the Senate’s clubby atmosphere. But Hagel isn’t known for playing well with others, and he has few allies among his former colleagues, Politico reports:
Policy aside, Hagel’s bedeviled by his own abrasive personality. In a chamber known for back-patting and elbow-rubbing, the former Nebraska senator mostly rubbed people the wrong way. Now, on his path to the Pentagon, he has to hope that irritation doesn’t come back to bite him.
“He was respected as a colleague in the normal Senate tradition but was somewhat of a lone wolf and did not forge the deep personal relationships with his fellow Republicans that would translate into a ready reservoir of support for his nomination,” said John Ullyot, a former Marine intelligence officer who was the spokesman for the Senate Armed Services Committee under Chairman John Warner from 2003 to 2007. “On top of that, his outspokenness and blunt criticism of several Republican priorities at a critical time, including Iraq and Iran, while sincere and heartfelt, have left him without a natural platform of enthusiasm for his confirmation.” …
The combination of raw nerves among his old colleagues and policy concerns among junior senators have cast doubt on Hagel’s confirmation process, which could prove to be the trickiest for a Pentagon pick since Texas Sen. John Tower was rejected, 47-53, in 1989. He was the last Cabinet nominee to lose a vote on the Senate floor, though others have since been withdrawn. A handful of Democratic senators, including Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.), threw their support to Hagel on Monday. But Obama and Hagel could count themselves lucky when a senator keeps his or her powder dry.
This isn’t a surprise, considering Hagel’s reputation as a difficult boss who often castigated his staffers in public (in Adam Kredo’s story on this, Michael Rubin dubbed Hagel “the Cornhusker wears Prada”). Apparently he didn’t treat his fellow senators much better.
But on the Hill, where being a team player matters, Hagel’s abrasive personality wasn’t his only problem. Eli Lake reports that his mercurial temperament has also irritated the GOP:
For Hagel’s supporters, the former senator’s willingness to change his mind is praised as independent thinking. But for many Republicans today, this quality makes him something of a turncoat. And while Hagel has been attacked for his views on Iran and Israel, it may end up being the former senator’s “mercurial” temperament that will turn Obama’s nomination of a Republican to head the Pentagon into a full-on battle with the party of Lincoln. …
It’s these positions that have earned Hagel praise from his new friends and criticism from many in his old party. But just as the Vietnam War veteran was able to adjust his worldview in 2005 and 2006, he appears to be adjusting it again in 2013. On Wednesday the Associated Press reported that Hagel, in private meetings with senior Pentagon officials, expressed his support for strong international sanctions against Iran as well as for leaving the option of military strikes on the table.
It remains to be seen whether these new positions are enough to persuade his old colleagues like John McCain to confirm his nomination as secretary of defense. The one thing his old party does know, however, is that Chuck Hagel is a man who is not afraid to change his mind.
If there is a filibuster, which looks very possible, Hagel will need 60 votes for a confirmation. In other words, Republicans alone have enough votes to kill his nomination, if they’re inclined. And with signs that some Democrats also have reservations about Hagel, the White House has little room for error.
Still weak, Commentary. You better still be working to find those vets to swiftboat him.
Seeing as how no one ELSE likes him, I suspect that an intrepid inquiry would find that some of his Vietnam buddies have a few things to say as well….
No one else likes him?! It is likely that some of his Vietnam buddies have a few things to say as well? n nWhy not speculate that he has a lousy marriage notwithstanding the number of years he has been married to the same woman and lack of evidence to the contrary? Such speculation wouldn't be much stupider, more irrelevant, less useful in opposing his nomination, etc. There are excellent reasons for opposing Hagel for Sec Def, so why weaken the case with the nonsense you suggest. ("Bad manager of his own office staff, with exceptional rate of turnover and reports of abusiveness," that's worth developing, but forget about looking for something to tarnish his military service record.)
"In a chamber known for back-patting and elbow-rubbing, the former Nebraska senator mostly rubbed people the wrong way."_Hmm, sounds like 0bama.
eeewww
There is nothing wrong with being independent, but the person must be on the level when he speaks. He can not say one thing and do another like Our famous president, Mr. Obama. This seems to be the position of Mr. Nagel. If he can't be trusted to keep his word, let him go ! Thank You !
I was just thinking of John Tower and Robert Bork. Not because I particularly agree with Bork or even remember much about John Tower but because back then the Senate and the media took it as their supreme and holy duty to defeat the President's wishes BECAUSE they were the President's wishes. One wonders what putting such a point to Chris Matthews who shouts every day that discussion and dissent are treason and whatever Obama demands Obama gets without the encumbrances of law or the Senate would yield us?
"back then the Senate…took it as their supreme and holy duty to defeat the President's wishes BECAUSE they were the President's wishes" Every cabinet nominee is a president's "wish," as is every nominee for the federal bench. So how do you get from the singular cases of Tower and Bork to your general assertion?
It's a comparative case. Today we're scolded and browbeaten that these Senate hearings should be no more than a courtesy resulting in a rubber stamp barely worthy of even questioning him. The reason we're given is the usual "WE won you lost!!!" Well fair enough, it's a difference w/o a distinction and barely something more significant than having a Sergeant of Arms in Congress to fulfill those ceremonial duties. I want to be able to point that out the next time the shoe's on the other foot is all.
well, he might just be desperately and cluelessly anxious to please "Wendy Day of Georgia in the United States," the interviewer, and the presumed Islamic masses tuned in. n nA hoot.
Bork had a paper trail that put slightly to the right of Attila the Hun when it came to civil liberties and human rights and would no doubt have been on the side of Benedict Arnold had he been around in 1776. Tower was turned down because the Senate believed his record as an alcoholic and womanizer, as disclosed by FBI files, was appropriate for the Secretary of Defense. Hagel's problem is not the various stances that he has taken on Iran, Hezbollah, Hamas, and Iraq, but that he has been publicly unwilling to his either the boots or tuchus of AIPAC or Morton Klein. Imagine the man declaring that he is a "US Senator, not an Israeli senator!" What chutzpah! Not like Sheldon Adelson, who also served, but without note in the US military, telling an audience in Israel that he wished he had served in the IDF instead. The difference? Hagel's a patriot and Adelson isn't, at least not of the country in which he was born and which gave him the opportunity to become filthy rich.
Do you have a link to get me directly to that 2009 al-Jazeera interview in which you say he "agree(d) that America is the worst bully in the world"? I would like to see his exact words and the context.