When it comes to selecting the country's head spook, our presidents have a pretty hit-and-miss history.
That's why President-elect Barack Obama should ignore the sudden hysteria over his choice for director of the Central Intelligence Agency. Despite what some congressional critics are saying, there's every reason to believe former California congressman Leon Panetta will do as well or better than most of his predecessors.
The ranking members of the Senate Intelligence Committee, including Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), the incoming chair, already are grousing about his lack of hands-on experience in one of the intelligence agencies.
But it's obvious that Panetta is a public servant of vast experience. His nine terms as a Democratic congressman from Monterey are well known, as are his highly successful stints as President Clinton's White House chief of staff and as head of the Office of Management and Budget. His career embodies the kind of principled bipartisanship that Obama hopes will characterize his administration.
Panetta, a graduate of Santa Clara University and its law school, actually began his political career as a Republican. He first went to Washington in 1966 as an assistant to Sen. Thomas Kuchel (R-Calif.) -- yes, Virginia, California once had Republican senators. Panetta subsequently served as assistant to another leading California Republican, Robert Finch, who was President Nixon's secretary of Health, Education and Welfare. Nixon then appointed Panetta director of the Office of Civil Rights.
Civil rights, equal opportunity and equal justice are Panetta's lifelong passions. In a memoir, he recounts how his determination to enforce the Voting Rights Act brought him into conflict with partisans of Nixon's "Southern strategy," who agitated for his firing. Panetta eventually resigned and went to work for New York's liberal Republican mayor, John Lindsay. The GOP's hardening animosity toward civil rights, however, ultimately forced him to switch parties.
We could do worse than have a CIA director with a bit of spine -- and, as tragic recent history has shown, we have.
Then there's the ahistorical issue of Panetta's lack of "intelligence credentials."
