This seems another example of the bizarre management notion that’s been around for a number of years which holds that once you’ve run one big organization, you can run any big organization - used to argue about it with a guy, a former Navy man, at the hospital where we worked - he insisted that someone who had commanded a naval vessel could easily walk in and lead a hospital, but for some reason bristled when I suggested that that meant someone who had once led a hospital should be able to take over command of any naval vessel......
Good point (why we don’t have hospital administrators assuming command of aircraft carrier wings).
One can often go from one large organization in one industry to another in a similar industry. But you don’t see CEO’s in the food industry suddenly going into the electronics industry and being successful.
Panetta is a politician. Politics and spin is his “product.” It’s all he’s done, and it’s all he understands. Intelligence is an entirely different kind of thing. And Panetta will be making decisions based on the wrong parameters.
Someone said, going back to the war on terror as a law enforcement matter. I don’t doubt that a bit.