There’s no way to “accidentally” not notify the President.
This.
This all happened over the long weekend. People are taking time off (hell, the Deputy was on vacation). Someone thinks Bob is supposed to do it, but Bob is on vacation and hungover, so thinks Bill is covering, but Bill is waking up late. Shit happens. It’s not supposed to, but it does.
Joe Biden has a bunch of direct reports concerned with national security. His principal military advisor is Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Charles Brown, and AFAIK Brown was on duty this whole time. When an emergency occurs, Joe Biden is informed.
Democracy relies on an informed free press. So I consider telling the public about the state of my government leadership a greater issue than how Biden manages leave schedules for his many direct reports. This is an example of Biden having done nothing significant to combat a culture of government secrecy – an issue for me but not something differentiating this administration from any ticket it is likely to run against.
This is the seniormost levels of our national security apparatus we’re talking about here, not the post-New Year’s morning shift at a Cleveland Denny’s.
Austin is only the appointed head of the Defense dept.
There are hundreds of professional analysts and bureaucrats that have lived and breathed their jobs in that Dept for decades.
I can’t see how Austin leaving his office for a few days makes any difference. I know he was in the ER and it potentially could be a lengthy illness. His deputy would take over until Biden appointed someone else.
Isn’t that the point of a bureaucracy? Administrations and political appointees come and go, but the trained people actually doing the work are there for most of their careers.
The Secretary of Defense is the highest in the command structure, aside from the president. There’s no way this is not a big deal.
It’s a matter of perspective. One party has a candidate who had a cabinet member hospitalized. The other side has a candidate who has personally committed sexual assault, election fraud, treason, and taken bribes from foreign governments.
It’s pretty clear which party is more delusional about the quality of their candidate.
Perhaps I should be more impressed by political appointees.
But, so many of those positions never get filled. I’m not singling out Biden. The system has been broken for decades.
Secretary of Defense and State are the exceptions that gets appointed quickly.
Perhaps you don’t grasp the level of authority represented by this political appointee. The only person in the country above him in the military chain of command is the President, who therefore is the one person who should know when this political appointee is out of commission for more than a couple of hours.
It isn’t that he was out of office that is the problem. It is that the President was not informed.
Try to imagine that something militarily critical happens during those four (I think) days. The Assistant Secretary, somewhere on a beach, has to make decisions, and maybe some of them don’t go so well. Imagine the ramifications afterwards.
But they don’t make large military decisions, they only carry out the decisions, and maybe some of them advise about the decisions.
Did the Assistant Secretary of Defense even know that they were acting SoD? Is there a formal process for this?
But according to what’s being reported, it wasn’t even clear when and how his Deputy was acting on his behalf during his illness. The Pentagon put out a statement that Deputy Defense Secretary Kathleen Hicks “was prepared to act for and exercise the powers” of the defense secretary. But did she? Other sources say she “partially assumed some duties” of the Sec Def while she continued to vacation in Puerto Rico. What does that mean?
It was clear as mud who was in charge at the Pentagon for those four days. And not much clearer now – Austin said he’s back in charge but he was still in the hospital as of last night.
In this particular case, this particular “political appointee” is a retired 4-star Army general, had been the commander of U.S. Central Command, had commanded in combat in both Iraq and Afghanistan, and is the recipient of a Silver Star medal.
And, to echo what others have already said: the concerning part of this isn’t that he was/is seriously ill, and apparently unable to perform his duties; the concerning part is that he’s a Cabinet member, and it appears that the President wasn’t made aware of his incapacitation for days.
A Pentagon head needs to roll for this. Quickly and publicly. Preferably with an abject apology for fumbling the ball.
Yeah, operationally things continue to function because the system is well set up for that purpose.
But the bit about CinC not knowing for days that his Defense Secretary was in ICU is something that should not happen. (The rest of us not knowing, that would be the sort of thing that should be CinC’s call.)
This reeks of “but what about her e-mails?!?!” deflecting. Nobody’s criticizing the Administration for having a cabinet member hospitalized. They’re legitimately criticizing the way it was handled and raising valid questions about how and why the President and the public were left in the dark.
I’m Team Joe, but I also don’t want to be the kind of person who can’t call out fucks-ups within the current Administration because TRUMP BAD.
Surely this wasn’t the only pointless insignificant news story this year. There must be thousands or even millions of people who did nothing worth mentioning in the first week of the year that deserve just as much mention and concern as this doesn’t.
This is especially of concern as Secretary Austin is, with the President, designated one of the two people in the National Command Authority for the use of nuclear weapons. God forbid the President only finds out when, say, a North Korean missile is arcing towards Hawaii, that the SECDEF is unavailable.
I suppose all I can do is disagree with you that this is a “pointless, insignificant news story.” I’d encourage you to ask yourself, though, if you’d have the same reaction if identical events had occurred during the Trump Administration.