Blogs For Victory

Seems that Obama didn’t mention this to Feinstein:

Sen. Dianne Feinstein, the Senate’s incoming Intelligence committee chair, slammed President-elect Barack Obama’s choice of Leon Panetta as director of the CIA Monday.

“I was not informed about the selection of Leon Panetta to be the CIA Director. I know nothing about this, other than what I’ve read,” Feinstein said in a statement. “My position has consistently been that I believe the Agency is best-served by having an intelligence professional in charge at this time.”

A Feinstein spokesman told CNN’s Dana Bash that the California senator found out about Obama’s pick after her staff showed her a New York Times report.

“The President-elect will now have a chance to make his arguments,” the spokesman said. “Her next move is to listen.”

Feinstein is the new chairwoman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. While Panetta’s political career — as a congressman, and as President Clinton’s chief of staff — spans three decades, he has little hands-on intelligence experience.

Curiously enough, when I first heard of the Panetta appointment, I was pleased. Now, don’t get me wrong – Panetta is just another liberal, as far as that goes, but he’s also one of the few adults in the senior ranks of the Democratic party and if we’re to have a liberal in charge of CIA, might as well have one who knows the difference between, as it were, poop and shinola. But DiFi seems displeased – allegedly on grounds of Panetta not being a career intel person. As for me, that is one of the grand advantages of our way of government – we can get people from outside the asylum to check up on the inmates from time to time (that said persons are sometimes crazier than the internal loons is a risk we run – but Panetta isn’t one of the screwballs).

Its not like the Democratic bench is chock full of talent, ya know? Any party which can’t find replacements for Byrd and Ted Kennedy is a party facing a famine of talent. With Richardson out (yes, he’s got his questionable activities, but he’s also one of the few adults in the party) it becomes more important than ever to obtain and retain the few first rate Democrats we have. It would be a sad thing if DiFi obtains Panetta’s scalp over a pettifogging (and rather cowardly) bias towards alleged experts.