Controversial Cabinet and Agency Picks—Part Five

Víctor Davis Hanson

Pete Hegseth/Secretary of Defense

What are the pros and cons of the nomination of Pete Hegseth to be Defense Secretary (in the context of the accepted norms for DOD secretary nominees in the past)?

Pros

On the plus side, Hegseth is a combat veteran of both wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

After graduating from Princeton, he went into the Minnesota National Guard, shortly after working on Wall Street for Bear Stearns.

Just a year later, he was called up to serve at Guantanamo, and (unlike our would-be vice president Tim Walz) he did not avoid combat deployments but volunteered to fight in Iraq in the bleak, deadly months of 2005.

Hegseth received the Bronze Star Medal, Combat Infantryman Badge, and a second Army Commendation Medal.

Seven years later, he was recalled to active duty as a captain, and this time deployed to Kabul. By 2014 he was promoted to major and left active duty but was subject to recall in the Army Individual Ready Reserve.

Hegseth left all military service in 2021—some 17 years after he had enlisted with the Guard. In between call-ups, Hegseth has worked as a political activist and supporter of veteran groups. He joined Fox News as a contributor a decade ago in 2014, after which he enjoyed a meteoric career as a Fox regular.

In sum, Hegseth has as much combat military experience as most Secretaries of Defense and is probably more knowledgeable of veterans affairs.

His political commentary has irked the Left and is the font of most criticism of him, as his opponents scour hundreds of thousands of words he has written over the last nine or so years.

Yet in the context of military affairs, his books also explain why Trump nominated him. Hegseth has been quite prolific with a series of publications, one right after another—The War on Warriors: Behind the Betrayal of the Men Who Keep Us Free; Battle for the American Mind: Uprooting a Century of Miseducation; American Crusade: Our Fight to Stay Free; Modern Warriors: Real Stories from Real Heroes; In the Arena: Good Citizens, a Great Republic, and How One Speech Can Reinvigorate America.

The themes of all his books are a deep distrust of the growth of government, the weaponization of the administrative state by hard-left ideologues, the pernicious agendas of the woke/DEI industry, the decline in classical education in K-12 schools, and the need for traditional patriotism as defined by more civic education, greater respect for the singularity of the American experiment, and renewed respect for and honor of military veterans.

So, in terms of education, military service, personal courage, patriotism, and idealism, Hegseth is eminently qualified, combining natural intelligence with both academic and pragmatic education. Yet Trump likely selected him mostly for his zeal for restoring a traditional America, starting with the military.

So, what could one logically expect from his commentaries and writings?

1. Hegseth would likely move to end the DEI programs that sprouted following the summer riots of 2020. He would honor to the letter the Supreme Court rulings that affirmative action and its cargo of racial and gender “positive” bias is illegal and must cease.

I would assume he then would fire DEI czars and restore former standards for combat units that were purely meritocratic. He would also likely readjust current relaxed physical requirements for women in combat. The reform theme would be to value military efficacy overall social and cultural criteria; i.e., the military is not a laboratory for social and cultural change and experimentation.

(To be continued…)