Is Leon Panetta The Next Secretary Of Defense?

Photo: CIA Director Leon Panetta

Insiders’ Choice For Department of Defense: Leon Panetta -- Politico

It’s a measure of CIA Director Leon Panetta’s status as the consummate Washington insider that, virtually overnight, it became accepted wisdom that he will be President Barack Obama’s next secretary of defense.

Never mind that he’ll be 73 in June, that he has been commuting to his West Coast home for the past two years and that there’s no word that he has actually been offered the job. Or that the job would present Robert Gates’s successor with even more difficult problems than Gates himself has faced — the necessity of cutting billions more dollars from the Pentagon budget in addition to managing U.S. forces in Iraq, Afghanistan and now Libya.

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Update: Capitol Alert: Will Leon Panetta be Obama's next defense secretary? -- Fresno Bee

My Comment: I am skeptical when I read reports from reporters who are speculating on who will be the next Sec. of Defense .... especially when such a decision is months away. My bet is that it will be someone who shares President Obama's worldview on what should be America's role on the world stage .... and I do not see Leon Panetta being that person.