Exit Gates' undersecretaries, enter Obama's people

By GottaLaff

Via Spencer Ackerman, we get a peek into a Gates' Pentagon, which will be staffed with Team Obama sub-cabineters:

Trusted defense adviser Richard Danzig would get the deputy secretary position and probably Michele Flournoy of the Center for a New American Security would get the undersecretaryship for policy. Now The Washington Post reports — via Matt Yglesias and Steve Benen — that not only is the deputy secretary, Gordon England, definitely leaving, all of Gates’ undersecretaries are.

Continuity is likely to come in the form of Gates and military commanders leading the war effort in Iraq and Afghanistan, while a new deputy and team of undersecretaries would manage the Pentagon and focus on longer-range issues such as “the budget, the Quadrennial Defense Review, missile defense, relations with allies and preparation for the next crisis,” said Michael O’Hanlon, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution.

(Yes, yes, that O’Hanlon.) An interesting question that I’ll be looking at later this week, is what happens to the undersecretary of defense for intelligence. [...] Will the job change now that there’s a new administration? The Post indicates so:

There is a real issue about how to fully recuperate” that office from the Rumsfeld era, and it would require a “team player” to promote more effective cooperation with the rest of the intelligence community, one source close to the transition said.

Yesterday on the Tee Vee Machine, Washington Note's Steve Clemons mentioned that there will be Obama's very own people (those he's had close ties to for some time) throughout the White House to create a real "balance of power". He went on to say that this should allay the fears of those who were concerned about all the non-liberal types with whom Obama has surrounded himself.