Obama Hires a Hustler- Tom Donilon to National Security Adviser

[Panaconda]

President Barack Obama stands with Tom Donilon, his appointed replacement for National Security Adviser James Jones, on Oct. 8 in the White House Rose Garden.

Obama Hires a Hustler
by Robert Scheer

One day as Wall Street was crashing, President George W. Bush had the temerity to plaintively ask his treasury secretary, Henry Paulson: “How did this happen?” Paulson, who headed Goldman Sachs before taking the Treasury job, remarks in his memoir: “It was a humbling question for someone from the financial sector to be asked—after all, we were the ones responsible.”

That’s an honest enough admission about the culpability of the financial community in bundling the toxic derivatives packages still disastrously undermining the economic health of the nation. Even more startling was Paulson’s admission in his memoir that he, at the time he was advising the president, still did not know that home mortgages were at the heart of those troubling securities that his former company had marketed to others with such wild abandon.

Were President Barack Obama to ask that question about the origins of this crisis of Tom Donilon, one of his closest aides whom he recently appointed to the critical job of national security adviser, Donilon would find it even more awkward to invoke the defense of ignorance. As the chief lobbyist for Fannie Mae from 1999 to 2005, he was far more intimately involved than Paulson in the manufacturing of this crisis. He successfully pressured Congress to give Fannie Mae the green light to speed past any sound regulation. Indeed, had Congress endorsed the barest semblance of regulation of the Fannie Mae-led housing scam, it would have been stillborn instead of being a very much alive Frankenstein creation.

Fannie Mae paid Donilon, a longtime Democratic Party operative, $15 million to lobby Congress to gut the power of government regulators to check the scandalous behavior in what would have been judged a crime until a majority of pro-Wall Street Republicans and Democrats in Congress rewrote the laws. He was also a top executive at Fannie Mae during the period when cooking the books to increase executive compensation would later lead to a $400 million fine. In pursuit of those profits, Fannie Mae entered into a partnership with Angelo Mozilo’s shady Countrywide Financial, and together they produced the computerized CLUES and MERS credit verification and mortgage registration systems that are at the heart of the housing swindle. Mozilo at least was finally slapped with a huge fine last week, while Donilon has yet to return a penny.

...

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/obama_hires_a_hustler_20101020/

[maryf]

1. Kick and recommend...

not that it shows, thanks for the truth. on edit: out of the hole pretty quick, actually!

[leftstreet]

2. Wait, whoa, stop - a Fannie Mae exec as National Security Adviser??

That can't be right.

[geckosfeet]

4. He (Donilon) is the ultimate DC insider. A skank if you ask me.

Obama Hires a Hustler

Behind the wonderfully engaging smile of this president there is the increasingly disturbing suggestion of a cynical power-grabbing politician whose swift rise in power reflects less the earnestness of his message and far more the skills of a traditional political hack. If there was more of the sincere community organizer in the inner makings of this man, he would not have turned to one of the architects of a housing scam in filling a leadership position in his administration. Why assume that Donilon will now run our foreign policy, wrapped as it is in a secrecy that endangers so many, with any greater sense of moral integrity than he employed when he enriched himself by impoverishing so many ordinary Americans not blessed with his political connections?

The more one learns about the political roots of our economic meltdown, the more the Democratic Party stands revealed as an equal partner with the Republicans at the center of corruption. Donilon has worked for most of the party’s top dogs, including Walter Mondale, Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton and Joe Biden. Surely the Republican ideologues who want to end all government consumer protections and are quite adroit at lining their own pockets are no better, but that is cold comfort. We are drowning in a bipartisan cesspool of corruption, and the sooner we grasp that fact the better.

You have to wonder why. You have to wonder.


Woodward: Gates Thinks Donilon A "Disaster"

You wonder what the Pentagon thinks of the man who is going to be President Obama's next National Security Adviser, Tom Donilon? Well Chris Good over at the Atlantic remembered this bit from Bob Woodward's book Obama's Wars, from page 343:

The Pentagon also had concerns about Donilon. When criticism of Jones had reached a high-water mark the previous year, Gates had decided to publicly embrace him. "I think of Jim as the glue that holds this team together," Gates told The Washington Post's David Ignatius, whose "Jim Jones's Team" ran prominently on the op-ed page.

Gates did this in part, he told an aide, because he did not think Donilon would work out as Jones's successor. Gates felt that Donilon did not understand the military or treat its senior leadership with sufficient respect. The secretary later told Jones that Donilon would be a "disaster" as Obama's national security adviser.

That should be a fun first meeting in the situation room.

I am simply at a loss.

[ixion]

3. kicked and recommended

[Starry Messenger]

5. WTF.

[Uzybone]

6. so what exactly are we to be outraged about here?

[Panaconda]

7. You don't know?

Do the homework.

[Uzybone]

12. a long time Democratic aide

who according to neocon Woodward, doesn't show enough respect for military leadership.

Oh and he also worked for Fannie Mae.

Still not sure what the outrage is? Is he any worse than Jones? Is he going to push more war or less war?

[Pirate Smile]

8. There are a bunch of articles by left leaning foreign policy types who think he is going to help

President Obama fight back against the Military and get us out of Afghanistan but, hey, make him into the bad guy if you want.

[Panaconda]

9. Such as?

This would seem the perfect forum and time to present your/their case.

[Pirate Smile]

11. Look down one post - I posted it to my reply because I didn't see yours yet.

[Pirate Smile]

14. You might love this headline: "10 reasons to be worried as Tom Donilon, Afghan war sceptic & ...

10 reasons to be worried as Tom Donilon, Afghan war sceptic & desk-bound foe of US military, gets top foreign policy job

This is from someone who is NOT a fan of Obama or Donilon but the headline says it all.

Some of the reasons -

4. Donilon was opposed to the Afghan surge. Donilon’s appointment is another sign that Obama’s heart is not in his own Afghan war strategy and he wants out quickly after July 2011. As Jacob Heilbrunn argues it’s a sign that Obama is “positioning himself to leave Afghanistan”.

8. Donilon is close to Joe Biden.

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/tobyharnden/100058209/10-reasons-to-be-worried-as-tom-donilon-desk-bound-foe-of-us-military-and-afghan-war-sceptic-gets-top-foreign-policy-job/

[Pirate Smile]

17. "The Significance of Tom Donilon's Rise to Power"

The Significance of Tom Donilon's Rise to Power

Jacob Heilbrunn
| More Jacob Heilbrunn | October 8, 2010

Much press attention has focused on President Obama's shakeup of his economic team. But his foreign policy team is due for one as well. The announcement today that national security adviser James L. Jones will be succeeded by his deputy Tom Donilon is Obama's first move. His next will be to replace Defense Secretary Robert Gates, who is eager to resign.

The elevation of Donilon clearly signals that Obama is positioning himself to leave Afghanistan. Forget the policy review that is due. The die is cast. Obama is not going to turn himself into a hostage of the Afghan war.

Donilon is a protege of Warren Christopher, who was a realist as Secretary of State during Bill Clinton's first term. Christopher and Donilon pushed for America to remain aloof from the Balkans war. Donilon raised his eyebrows over Madeleine Albright's approach to foreign policy during the Clinton years. He is a believer in quiet diplomacy. Donilon, a seasoned operator and lawyer, who first worked in the Carter administration, will push for decoupling from Afghanistan and Iraq. As David E. Sanger observes:

As deputy national security adviser, Mr. Donilon has urged what he calls a “rebalancing” of American foreign policy to rapidly disengage American forces in Iraq and to focus more on China, Iran and other emerging challenges. In the Afghanistan-Pakistan review, he argued that the United States could not engage in what he termed “endless war,” and has strongly defended Mr. Obama’s decision to withdraw American troops from Afghanistan next summer.

Donilon's record suggests that he will continue to push for focusing on relations with Russia and China. Human rights will not be an important part of his foreign affairs agenda. He may well clash with Hillary Clinton, who has been pushing for a more interventionist approach in recent months. But one thing seems certain: Obama's approach to foreign policy after the midterms will look very different from his first two years in office.

http://nationalinterest.org/blog/jacob-heilbrunn/the-significance-tom-donilons-rise-power-4196

[Pirate Smile]

10. Here is one of them - I'll post them following my initial post:

Obama's War With the Pentagon
The clash between the White House and the military brass over the Afghan war will grow more intense under the new national security adviser.
by Peter Beinart
October 10, 2010 | 11:09pm

-snip-
From the military’s perspective, Donilon is worse than a mere civilian; he’s a politico. He was a party operative before he was a foreign policy wonk, which is one reason he worked so well with Rahm Emanuel, the man who pushed Jones to hire him as his deputy. At the White House, Donilon’s political savvy was considered an asset. But within the military, his prominence was seen as evidence that the White House subordinated national security to crass political concerns. Throughout Woodward’s book, Obama’s Wars, Donilon makes cameos as the guy who screams at generals for trying to trick or push Obama into a deeper commitment to Afghanistan than he wants to make. Less than a month after Obama took office, according to Woodward, Donilon berated military leaders for pushing for an increased troop commitment without having solid numbers on how many they really needed. That fall, after Stanley McChrystal told a London audience that anything but a full-blown counterinsurgency strategy would be a disaster, Donilon flayed members of the military brass once again, further alienating his counterparts at the Pentagon. Defense Secretary Robert Gates, according to Woodward, warned against making Donilon NSC advisor. Jones told Donilon that “you have no credibility with the military” and warned him to stop mouthing off to generals about topics he knew little about.

Now that he’s NSC adviser, Donilon will surely try to mend fences. But his conflicts with the military aren’t simply about good manners. And they are not merely a product of the culture clash between liberal civilians and military types that typically plagues Democratic administrations. They have their roots in a profound disagreement over policy. Donilon, after all, is a Biden guy. He worked on Biden’s 1988 presidential campaign, worked for him in the Senate, and then worked on his 2008 campaign. His wife is Jill Biden’s chief of staff. Biden is the administration figure most determined to limit the Afghan war and the figure who most prides himself on not being intimidated by generals. And there is evidence that Donilon shares his views. At one point in Obama’s “AfPak” review, according to Woodward, Donilon bolstered Biden’s contention that the Taliban, as opposed to Al Qaeda, poses no real threat to the United States. According to Politico, Donilon has been a strong defender of the summer 2011 deadline for beginning to withdraw U.S. troops that Obama laid out when he announced the Afghan surge.

From the moment Obama made that announcement, the military brass has been undercutting it, suggesting that if America hasn’t turned the tide against the Taliban by next summer, the troops will stay. With his decision to simultaneously surge and announce a withdrawal deadline, Obama essentially deferred last year’s civilian-military showdown until next year. And assuming that the tide in Afghanistan hasn’t turned—which is a pretty safe bet—the showdown is likely to be brutal, especially with Petraeus now directly running the Afghan war, and therefore even more invested in showing that the counterinsurgency doctrine on which he made his reputation can work there.

The conventional wisdom is that Obama chose Donilon because he’s already the guy who makes the trains run on time. But it’s also possible that he chose him because Obama knows that he is headed for a bureaucratic knife fight over Afghanistan, and in that internal struggle, he no longer wants someone like Jones who plays both sides. Instead, he wants someone who will help him wind down America’s Afghan adventure, no matter how hard he has to fight Petraeus and company to do it. If that’s true, promoting Donilon may be the most important foreign policy pick Obama has yet made. Because unless Obama begins to extricate the U.S. from the Afghan war next year, it will swallow his foreign policy, and perhaps his presidency itself.

http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2010-10-10/tom-donilon-and-obamas-war-with-the-pentagon/p/

[Pirate Smile]

13. Here is another one: Steve Clemons - Tom Donilon: Obama’s Last Best Hope

Tom Donilon: Obama’s Last Best Hope

-snip-
Donilon thinks this way. He is a realist and a skeptic of many of the military’s grand schemes in which large resources are given, big promises made, and then no accountability for the military down the road. His ascension telegraphs that President Obama feels he does need to bring the Pentagon to heel, and Donilon is the right guy to do this.

Rather than spending his time in tractionless pursuit of platitudes or remaining safely in the grooves of inertia and incrementalism, Donilon’s political skills and his knowledge of the policy terrain may give us our only chance for the Obama team to finally begin making key strategic leaps that will benefit the nation and international system.

– Steve Clemons

http://thefastertimes.com/washingtonnotes/2010/10/11/tom-donilon-obamas-last-best-hope/

[Panaconda]

18. Neither Beinart

or Clemons are anything close to left-leaning. If their slant is what you perceive to be "left" you may consider a much needed recalibration.

Tom Donilon, earned $3.9 million as a partner at the law firm O'Melveny & Myers LLP, where his clients included Citigroup Inc., Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and Obama fund-raiser and hotel heiress Penny Pritzker.

[Pirate Smile]

19. Any comment on the substance as opposed to the authors?

[bigtree]

15. I don't think he's going to be working on finance issues and concerns as NSA

from the NYT: http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/10/08/donilon-to-replace-jones-as-national-security-adviser

Mr. Donilon began as young political operative for President Jimmy Carter and later was chief of staff for Secretary of State Warren Christopher in the Clinton administration. He has long operated in the area between politics and national security. He coached Mr. Obama on foreign policy for his debates during the 2008 presidential campaign.

As deputy national security adviser, he has urged what he calls a “re-balancing” of American foreign policy to rapidly disengage American forces in Iraq and to focus more on China, Iran and other emerging challenges. In the Afghanistan-Pakistan review, he argued that the United States could not engage in what he termed “endless war,” and has strongly defended Mr. Obama’s decision to declare that troops will begin leaving Afghanistan next summer


from HuffPo: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/10/08/tom-donilon-disaster-national-security-advisor_n_755708.html

Outgoing National Security Adviser Jim Jones once disparaged his replacement and current deputy, Thomas Donilon, for his lack of overseas experience, telling him that as a result: You have no credibility with the military, according to Bob Woodward's Obama's Wars . . . Gates called him a 'disaster'.


the replacement of outgoing NSA Jim Jones with Tom Donilon, who served under both President Carter and Clinton, either confirms, or, at the least, can serve to facilitate the drawdown of the escalated U.S. forces in Afghanistan the President promised - advantages it politically, anyway . . .

[ChimpersMcSmirkers]

16. I saw this flick. Gleason sucked in that one.

Or are you talking about this.



I'm confused...

[PufPuf23]

20. I can see why this is a rather not be here post. lol. nt