Change I Do Believe In

I think the Bush administration treated the Navy like a secondary service that didn't matter. I think the Obama administration is demonstrating true brilliance with the appointments of the seriously intelligent and capable tag team of Ray Mabus and Bob Work.

President Barack Obama has nominated Robert Work, a retired Marine colonel and a widely followed writer and thinker on naval issues, to be his undersecretary of the Navy, the White House announced Wednesday.

With the nomination of Work, the Obama administration has identified both people it wants in the Navy’s top two civilian positions. The White House nominated former Mississippi Gov. Ray Mabus to become Navy secretary March 27.

Work, who is now vice president for strategic studies at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, a Washington think tank, served as a senior military aide to former Navy Secretary Richard Danzig and has contributed to several Defense Department and private sector studies, as well as pursued his own work. He issued a report earlier this year with broad recommendations for how the Navy can reach its goal of a larger fleet even as its budgets stay flat or decline.

Congratulations to both Ray Mabus and Bob Work. This is great for the Navy, in particular this will be great for surface warfare.

I learned a lesson earlier this year when it turned out I could have accidentally hurt his reputation when, without Bob's knowledge, I threw in my support for Bob becoming the next Secretary of the Navy back in December when he was part of the Obama transition team.

Bob Work and I are friends, but I had not spoke with him a few months prior to that post, indeed didn't speak with him until after the transition team work was completed. I don't know the full extent I may have raised eyebrows among the Obama people at that time, but when several thousand people see his name being promoted as Secretary of the Navy in the blogosphere while he is busy doing transition stuff, as I understand the story it had some people raising eyebrows at him. It is bad taste for someone to advocate themselves into an appointed position, but Bob had nothing to do with it, his reputation as a serious strategic thinker of naval issues over the years is what led to Springboard's admiration and advocation. At the time, I wasn't reading Springboard, but someone I know who had read Springboard's post convinced me this was a really good idea.

There is an enormous rest of the story, but I'll save those details for a book due out sometime around 2020.