Slate, July 12, 2010 Slate Columns
The New York Times publishes a weightless profile of Denis McDonough.
National Security Council Chief of Staff Denis McDonough wades like a colossus through the Obama White House in a New York Times weekend piece by Helene Cooper, "The Saturday Profile: The Adviser at the Heart of National Security" (July 10).
"When it comes to national security, Mr. Obama's inner circle is so tight it largely consists of Mr. McDonough," the Times reports. McDonough shoves aside the dwarves who are his superiors and who dare arrive at an Afghanistan consensus that conflicts with the president's. He fires a get-things-done communique from his BlackBerry--"which is never far from his side"--that compels Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano to keep Florida airspace open to Haitian evacuations. When the Rolling Stone piece on Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal broke, "Mr. McDonough was one of about a half-dozen people he immediately summoned to the Oval Office."
"He is the keeper of the president's flame," Cheryl Mills, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's chief of staff, tells the Times. He's "far closer to the president than" his "old Democratic rivals," it reports.
But why exactly does this 40-year-old, 6-foot-3 giant occupy an "inner circle" of two with Obama when it comes to U.S. national security? Why do all of his bureaucratic rivals kowtow to him? After reading the piece four times, I haven't a clue.
What national security ideas does McDonough have? The Times doesn't say. What advice has he given the president? The Times doesn't say. Where did he go to school, and what has he written about national security? Why should Obama listen to him? What expertise does he bring to the job? Again, the Times doesn't say. What did he do for a living before he joined the Obama presidential campaign? The Times does better here, reporting that he worked as a foreign policy adviser to Sen. Tom Daschle, D-S.D., until Daschle was voted out of office in 2004, after which McDonough took an appointment at the liberal Center for American Progress.
What are McDonough's great accomplishments in the Obama administration? If your definition of accomplishments is broad enough, the Times is here to inform you that he has chewed out Pentagon and State Department officials he suspects of leaking, has berated "some of the Democratic Party's most distinguished foreign policy dignitaries when they have dared to critique Mr. Obama publicly," and has blown up at unnamed reporters. He watches the president's back. He also makes "sure that junior members of the National Security Council staff are invited to receptions and parties." Recently, say his anonymous colleagues, he's "mellowed."
(Continued on Slate.)
