Four takeaways from Tulsi Gabbard’s Road to Confirmation

On By Littum

Tulsi Gabbard’s confirmation of functioning as the director of National Intelligence once seemed in doubt. Republican senators expressed private skepticism about her qualifications, and her attitudes to Russia and Syria were in violation of the party’s old positions. But at a party’s vote on Wednesday, the Senate approved Mrs. Gabbard to serve in the Senior Intelligence Post.

After all the Republicans in the Senate Intelligence Committee approved her nomination, her confirmation was all insured. These private concerns from Republican lawmakers never became considerable public resistance. Elon Musk, President Trump’s billionaire allies, took on a Republican whose vote was in doubt, and Mrs. Gabbard worked the halls to win over the support of the wobbly legislators.

Here are four takeaways about Ms. Gabbard’s path to confirmation and her mandate in the future.

Then Mr. Trump made his first messages about his choices for key roles in his cabinet, there was plenty of hand -wing, even from some Republican senators. A election, former representative Matt Gaetz from Florida, withdrew after his first day of coordinated lobbying in Senate offices. But Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Kash Patel and Ms. Gabbard hung on and worked Republican senators who were on the fence. Democrats were not impressed with Ms. Gabbard’s efforts. But it didn’t matter. She won everyone except one of the Republicans.

The bottom line is that it is anything but impossible to defeat a cabinet member on the floor of the Senate in the current age. No nominee has been rejected since 1989, when John Tower, President George HW Bush’s election to defense secretary, was rejected, 47 to 53. But a nominee with the support of the president and the persistence to take criticism has a good chance of getting through.

Ms. Gabbard adjusted his position on warrantless wiretaps for overseas communication. She promised not to oppose the goodutorization of the measure, a key contact in time that reassured Senator Tom Cotton of Arkansas, the Republican President of the Intelligence Committee, and Senator Todd Young, Republican in Indiana and one of the fence’s seats.

But Mrs. Gabbard stood her ground on Edward Snowden, the former intelligence contractor, who released a huge amount of classified information on secret surveillance programs.

Ms. Gabbard and legislators knew to go into her confirmation hearing that Mr. Snowden would be a flash point. But few expected the fireworks that broke out. To condemn him as a traitor who both Republicans and Democrats wanted her to do would have been the politically appropriate position. Even Mr. Snowden, from her refuge in Russia, urged her to distance herself from him.

But Mrs. Gabbard, long a defender of privacy and a skeptic of government monitoring, refused to say the word “traitor.” Instead, she adhered to her promise that whistles under her leadership would have legal ways of reporting their concerns about government programs that they thought had exceeded.

The Director of National Intelligence has a broad authority to set priorities of intelligence collection and coordinate the work of the various intelligence agencies. But the director does not run these agencies who have their own leadership.

The most important role as the director of national intelligence is to gather the intelligence of these agencies and present it to the president of a daily brief. In his first period, Mr. Trump sometimes with his briefs. The most skilled of them had to work hard to present him information that he may not want to hear – including about Russian influence operations.

In Ms. Gabbard has Mr. Trump someone who largely shares his worldview of terrorism, the importance of better relations with Russia, skepticism about the Ukrainian government and the danger of endless wars. In her confirmation hearing, Democrats were skeptical that she would be willing to tell Mr. Trump something he wouldn’t hear. But Republicans came to the view that as long as Mrs. Gabbard promised not to undermine their priorities, it was important for Trump to have his person in an important advisory role.

Ms. Gabbard has repeatedly said that her highest priority is to depoliticize the intelligence community and focus it on her central mission: the objective collection of information. What it will mean in practice is not entirely clear. But she will conduct a review of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, and efforts such as the foreign malignant influence center criticized by Republicans are likely to have a tough look.

Ms. Gabbard also promised senators of both parties that she would undergo some old intelligence questions, including the origin of the Coronavirus pandemic, unidentified aerial phenomena and the mysterious suffering known as Havana syndrome that spies and diplomats have reported over the years.