His experience is limited compared to someone who’s been a long service Washington insider but it’s not nonexistent. He was the USMC Commandant’s Liaison to the House and later served as the Commandant’s legislative assistant during his military career. He was also the senior military assistant to SECDEF (Leon Panetta). Service as a COCOM (Pacific Command) would have required managing cross departmental issues (especially with Dept of State and the National Intelligence Community). It also would have required interfacing with Non-Governmental Organizations and military leaders from partner nations who were not subject to his formal authority. In addition COCOMs are either directly involved, or closely tied to JCS/SECDEF involvement, in reporting to Congress conducting oversight and budgeting. We can also throw in 6 months of a Cabinet level post since retiring. He’s clearly not well prepared for the environment. He doesn’t have the personal connections Priebus had with Reps/Senators from supporting campaigns as RNC Chair. In some areas he’s better qualified for the environment of the job than Priebus was.
If he went into most of his duty positions while still in uniform with a “Follow my orders you scum” attitude the chance of making it as far as he did was low. Relying on a direct and in your face use of formal authority is only one tool in a successful military leader’s tool bag. Like a 20 lb sledgehammer it’s a tool that should be reached for sparingly while aware of the repercussions. Unsurprisingly, the Hollywood fueled popular notion of what military leadership looks like is wildly off base IME. An officer that tries to follow that Hollywood norm, especially with his senior NCO’s, should have a good backup plan for an early transition to a civilian career.
I think Baghdad Bob may be available (the article mentions someone who claimed to be a) him and b) dying in 2014, but it refers to him in the present tense). I’m not sure how he could be much worse than we’ve seen, and he’d sure as hell be entertaining.
Prison’s probably out. I figure with just ten days as part of this administration, there’s only about a fifty percent chance he committed any serious crimes.