Gates Securing A Role Under Yet Another President

Interesting look into the personality of Secretary Gates. I personally like him a lot for his pragmatic, nonpartisanship approach. What a nice change from Rummy.

Proof of Gate's pragmatic approach comes from another article talking about how he has lobbied Congress for an increase in the State Department's budget. Gates realizes that there is no permanent military solution in Afghanistan or Iraq, and that there needs to be a civilian surge in addition to a military one. There is no way Rumsfeld (or most other cabinet members to be honest) would ever advocate for other departments to get a larger share of the funding pie. It's nice to see a realization that we are all working together to achieve the same goal, and that in order to be successful, everyone needs to be able to fully do their job.