Officially, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta isn’t going anywhere.
The prevailing assumption in Washington, however, is that the 74-year old consummate D.C. insider, who deferred retirement to take over the Pentagon last year, will bow out early in President Barack Obama’s second term/.../
“We’re closing a chapter, with the wars of the last decade ending and now focusing on a new region of the world,” said Todd Harrison, a fellow at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Analysis. “For that you need a transformational leader. … If we end up with the status quo, that’s a signal the administration is not committed to making as significant a pivot as the strategy actually suggests/.../”
Who could shake things up?
Harrison said naming a business leader like Ford CEO Alan Mulally, who rose through the ranks at Boeing before he took over Ford in 2006 and helped turn around the stumbling auto company, would signal a deep strategic shift in the works.