{"id":22656,"date":"2014-01-07T12:49:43","date_gmt":"2014-01-07T20:49:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/antiwar.com\/blog\/?p=22656"},"modified":"2014-01-07T12:49:43","modified_gmt":"2014-01-07T20:49:43","slug":"former-defense-sec-bob-gates-obama-wh-most-centralized-since-nixon-kissinger","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/2014\/01\/07\/former-defense-sec-bob-gates-obama-wh-most-centralized-since-nixon-kissinger\/","title":{"rendered":"Former Defense Sec Bob Gates: Obama WH Most Centralized Since Nixon &#038; Kissinger"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>DC wonks are giddy at the political drama sure to unfold with <a href=\"http:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/world\/national-security\/robert-gates-former-defense-secretary-offers-harsh-critique-of-obamas-leadership-in-duty\/2014\/01\/07\/6a6915b2-77cb-11e3-b1c5-739e63e9c9a7_story.html\">Bob Woodward&#8217;s review<\/a> in the <em>Washington Post<\/em> of Robert Gates&#8217;s new <img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright size-medium wp-image-22661\" alt=\"US Defense Secretary Robert Gates.\" src=\"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/01\/Robert-Gates1-300x224.jpg\" width=\"300\" height=\"224\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/01\/Robert-Gates1-300x224.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/01\/Robert-Gates1.jpg 470w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/>memoir to be published this month. The controversy is predictably focused on a few quotes in which Gates describes Obama as petty and political and expresses &#8220;outright contempt for Vice President Joe Biden and many of Obama\u2019s top aides,&#8221; as Woodward puts it.<\/p>\n<p>Other than the &#8220;he said, she said&#8221; and the political name-calling that everyone seems to eat up like America eats up reality TV, there was one quote from Gates&#8217;s forthcoming book that really stood out to me. Gates referenced Obama&#8217;s &#8220;determination that the White House tightly control every aspect of national security policy and even operations,&#8221; and that &#8220;his White House was by far the most centralized and controlling in national security of any I had seen since Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger ruled the roost.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;m not surprised. See <a href=\"http:\/\/antiwar.com\/blog\/2013\/08\/08\/the-audacity-of-lying-obama-fibs-on-nsa-spying-again\/\">here<\/a> for another similarity I&#8217;ve noticed between the Obama and Nixon administrations.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>DC wonks are giddy at the political drama sure to unfold with Bob Woodward&#8217;s review in the Washington Post of Robert Gates&#8217;s new memoir to be published this month. The controversy is predictably focused on a few quotes in which Gates describes Obama as petty and political and expresses &#8220;outright contempt for Vice President Joe [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":86,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-22656","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"meta_box":{"disable_donate_message":"","custom_donate_message":"","subtitle":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22656","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/86"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22656"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22656\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22662,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22656\/revisions\/22662"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22656"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22656"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22656"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=22656"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}