How Appointments Fail

Laura Rozen (who I fact-checked back in the day when she was doing some freelancing for National Journal and I was a baby journalist) has a good post up about how Chas Freeman's nomination to to chair the National Intelligence Council blew up. It's an interesting look at the confluence of lobbying, political and media skils, and vetting. This paragraph stood out at me:

A former colleague of Blair's, who asked to speak on background, said the former Pacific commander and former Rhodes Scholar is "intellectually brilliant" but "not a Leon Panetta." The CIA director and former Clinton chief of staff, he said, "is a creature of the Washington establishment -- a former member of Congress who understands the political nuances of the Beltway."

But, of course, Panetta's not just a Washingotn insider; he knows how to handle a bureaucracy.