Jake Tapper
ABC News
October 21, 2008
George Packer from the New Yorker magazine reports on an email he got from Ken Adelman today indicating that the neo-con is planning on voting for Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill.
As Packer points out, this is no small thing. Adelman was hired by Don "Rumsfeld at the Office of Economic Opportunity under Nixon, was assistant to Defense Secretary Rumsfeld under Ford, served as Reagan’s director of arms control, and joined the Defense Policy Board for Rumsfeld’s second go-round at the Pentagon, in 2001. Adelman’s friendship with Rumsfeld, Cheney, and their wives goes back to the sixties, and he introduced Cheney to Paul Wolfowitz at a Washington brunch the day Reagan was sworn in."
- A d v e r t i s e m e n t
Said Adleman, to Packer: "Why so, since my views align a lot more with McCain’s than with Obama’s? And since I truly dread the notion of a Democratic president, Democratic House, and hugely Democratic Senate?
"Primarily for two reasons, those of temperament and of judgment.
"When the economic crisis broke, I found John McCain bouncing all over the place. In those first few crisis days, he was impetuous, inconsistent, and imprudent; ending up just plain weird. Having worked with Ronald Reagan for seven years, and been with him in his critical three summits with Gorbachev, I’ve concluded that that’s no way a president can act under pressure.
"Second is judgment. The most important decision John McCain made in his long campaign was deciding on a running mate.
"That decision showed appalling lack of judgment. Not only is Sarah Palin not close to being acceptable in high office—I would not have hired her for even a mid-level post in the arms-control agency. But that selection contradicted McCain’s main two, and best two, themes for his campaign—Country First, and experience counts. Neither can he credibly claim, post-Palin pick."
Read the rest of the e-mail HERE.
On the other hand — Adelman infamously suggested US forces would experience a "cakewalk in Iraq." So it’s not like his judgment is unassailable.
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