US defence secretary quits, unloved by Trump

Patrick Shanahan, acting US defence secretary since the exit of General Jim Mattis in January, has never looked the part. Now he has quit "to spend more time with his family", an obvious cliche reason for leaving a top job in politics. As it happens, it turns out there was a skeleton in the family cupboard, with revelations that there had been domestic violence incidents some years ago. But I think the real reason is that Trump realised he wasn't up to the job. With his two big bears beside him, Mike Pompeo and John Bolton, Trump probably thought Shanahan was pretty insignificant. I sympathise with Shanahan who spent 30 years with Boeing as an executive, because having the "acting" word in front of his appointment never gave him the clout he needed as chief of the US Defence Department. He always seemed like a temporary defence secretary, not a defence secretary waiting to be confirmed by the Senate. In fact the nomination process had been delayed and delayed until it almost seemed as if Trump was reconsidering his promised nomination. Officials claimed it was taking time because of the necessary FBI background checks. But he had already been pretty comprehensively checked out when he was appointed deputy defence secretary to Jim Mattis. So what else had to be found out? Apparently as the prospective Pentagon boss the FBI needed to check right back to when Shanahan was 18. But surely that shouldn't have taken too long? So I think that is all rubbish. As time went by, Trump began to think, "Who is this guy? Is he the man I want?" The answer, I believe, was definitely no. I bet Pompeo and Bolton thought the same. In the Pentagon itself, Shanahan was like a ghost. He so rarely held press conferences that none of the Pentagon Press Corps knew what he really thought about anything. What he liked to do was give an impromptu question and answer session when he was about to go into a meeting or when he was about to meet a visiting foreign defence minister. But often hs replies to pointed questions were vague and hopelessly jumbled. He could hardly string a proper sentence together. And when he did say anything interesting, possibly by mistake, he later was eager to clarify what he said or tried to put it into a different context. I think he was so wary of upsetting Trump that he never actually gave his own opinion on any issue. He just blathered out what he thought was expected of him by the Big Boys in the administration. He was in a difficult position but if he really wanted to be Trump's defence secretary, he should have had the courage to speak out and show the Pentagon that he was a force to be reckoned with. He never did and never was.