It looks like Senator John McCain’s strong opposition to Susan Rice’s potential secretary of state nomination set off a chain of events that could end up leading to Chuck Hagel’s nomination for the top role at the Pentagon.
You can’t exactly blame Republican critics of Rice; they had legitimate concerns about her role in Benghazi. But some have speculated McCain’s long-time friendship with John Kerry–now the most likely candidate for secretary of state–may have also played a role.
McCain has also been very close with fellow Vietnam veteran Hagel, though it’s not clear how much that relationship was strained by the 2008 election, when Hagel became a vocal critic of McCain’s foreign policy.
Now that McCain has decided to stay on the Armed Services Committee, he will obviously play a role in the next secretary of defense confirmation hearings. As a hawk on Iran and a supporter of U.S. intervention in Syria, McCain could provide crucial cover for Hagel, who is considered soft on Iran and opposed to foreign intervention. Or McCain could do to Hagel what Hagel did to him in 2008. He repeatedly whacked McCain on foreign policy during the election, and promptly joined Obama’s national security advisory board once it was over.
“In good conscience, I could not enthusiastically—honestly—go out and endorse [McCain],” Hagel told the New Yorker in 2008. “when we so fundamentally disagree on the future course of our foreign policy and our role in the world.”
Hagel better hope his old friend doesn’t feel the same way.