Deputy Secretary Lynn? Taxpayers Are Cold - Please Close the Revolving Door

Several people have said that they're curious to know what our take is on the rumbling that William J. Lynn--senior vice president of Government Operations and Strategy at Raytheon--will be the next deputy defense secretary at the Department of Defense (DoD).  While we aren't thrilled to see the repeated practice of appointing someone from the defense industry to oversee the defense industry, we do recognize that sometimes this experience can translate into leadership more willing to call a spade a spade when a system doesn't work, and may provide him the kind of expertise to make the desperately needed improvements to how DoD does business.  We also hope to see a DoD that will discourage members of Congress from using the defense budget as a pork barrel or jobs program.

But the most important thing is making sure that Lynn doesn't go back through the revolving door again after public service--as we've seen happen too many times before.  We hope that President-elect Obama will change the rules so that this appointee and others won't be able to cash in on their contacts made through their public service.  At the end of the day, what taxpayers need is someone who is going to put taxpayer interests before their financial or private interests--no matter whether they are entering or exiting public service.

-- Mandy Smithberger

Comments

[KSBR thinking]

Okay, Mandy: would it be ok if the eventual reg restricted the first-born of Mr. Lynn from being a Defense contractor? Short of that, can Mr. Lynn be electronically neutered so he will never give rise to a good-for-the-Warfighter idea while employed, again, in the private sector? If we trust officials to exercise high levels of public trust in the first place, we need to trust them to disclose potential conflicts, be transparent, and steer clear of active conflicts or even the appearance of same. That is what new regs need to do. The talent pool is just not that big to foul out so many people, ya know? Who would you want as depsecdef? Someone who has no background in defense? Some odd, patched up, self-aggrantizing professor from the K school? Some person who cut his teeth only at Bozo Allen or the Carlisl Gp? Someone who had never seen a cockpit or a men's locker room? The possibilities are endless.