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Robert Michael Gates (b. 1943) was Secretary of Defense (2006-2011) for Bush'43 & Barrack Obama. Prior to that he had been 26 years in the CIA and ended being the Director of the CIA under Bush'41. So, by appearance, he is experienced in Intelligence and the SWAMP and not unacceptable to the Obama Administration as he served his last two years as Secretary of Defense in his Cabinet.

Secretary Gates, in his 2014 Memoir, published while Biden was Obama's VP, had less than kind words about Biden's decision making. In an interview at that time he said; "The vice president, when he was a senator — a very new senator — voted against the aid package for South Vietnam, and that was part of the deal when we pulled out of South Vietnam to try and help them survive. He said that when the Shah fell in Iran in 1979 that that was a step forward for progress toward human rights in Iran. He opposed virtually every element of President Reagan's defense build-up. He voted against the B-1, the B-2, the MX and so on. He voted against the first Gulf War. So on a number of these major issues, I just frankly, over a long period of time, felt that he had been wrong."

More recently, in a 2019 CBS "60 Minutes" Interview with Margaret Brennan when Biden was running for the Democratic Party Nomination, Gates when asked about his suitability for the Presidency, said that he didn't know. However he did stand on the quote from his memoir AND further stated; "We disagreed significantly on Afghanistan and some other issues. I think that the vice president had some issues with the military." Secretary Gates also, in that interview, cast doubts upon Biden's ability to overcome his age in handling the burdens of the Office.