Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R., S.D.) has privately told President-elect Donald Trump that he believes that Pete Hegseth, Trump's pick to run the Pentagon, has the votes to be confirmed. We hope that's the case.
Hegseth brings impressive academic credentials combined with real-world experience—in his case, a distinguished record of service in the Army, where he did tours in Guantanamo Bay and Iraq that earned him two Bronze Stars. "Daily life in the States distorts our perspective, we get petty and particular; but from Iraq, America shines on the horizon, her flaws minimized by distance and her virtues magnified by comparison," he wrote friends in a moving letter from Iraq in 2006.
Hegseth, who ran two nonprofit organizations when he returned from the Middle East and went on to become a Fox News anchor, doesn't have the traditional qualifications of a secretary of defense, but he does have the confidence of the president, the sine qua non of success in a Trump administration.
He has given us a window since his nomination in mid-November into how and why he has endeared himself to Trump, demonstrating an ability to push back and shut down false narratives in the press.
He has a fighting spirit that saved his nomination from an early demise just weeks ago. By his own admission, Hegseth is not a bureaucrat or a typical striver who has led his life with an eye toward career advancement. Like Trump, he is a thrice-married man who has been in the public eye for decades; unlike the president-elect, Hegseth says he is a reformed man who has found God. His confirmation hearing next week will no doubt offer Democrats the opportunity to take some more swings at him, but there is no reason Republicans should flinch.
Most importantly, in an administration that will include aides and advisers with divergent views on foreign policy, including some who represent the Republican Party's resurgent isolationist wing, Hegseth is clear-eyed about the multitude of threats our country faces.
In an interview with the Washington Free Beacon, Hegseth discussed the dangers posed by China and Iran. He said the best way to prevent a military confrontation with China is to rebuild America's defense industrial base, and he faulted the Biden administration for its attempts to handcuff Israel's response to attacks from Hamas, Hezbollah, and Iran. "They've gotten it almost completely wrong because there's an administration full of folks who do not actually support the State of Israel's right to defend itself," he said.
At the Pentagon, he said, "rebuilding the culture of our military" in order to "get back to war fighting, lethality, and meritocracy and accountability and readiness" will be the order of the day, adding, "The motto of my first platoon I ever led was 'Those who long for peace must prepare for war.' That's another way of saying 'peace through strength.' And we need to look like we are prepared to fight, and orient toward the threats today so that hopefully we can deter those wars."
We do indeed. And if deterrence fails, we will need a defense secretary with the confidence of the president, a will to fight, and the courage to never give in. Hegseth is the man for the job.
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