The departure this summer of Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates, arguably the most powerful voice in the cabinet, leaves more than an empty seat in the Situation Room. It is a chance for President Obama, at a critical moment in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and amid the Arab uprisings, to rethink the dynamic of the group making some of the most critical decisions in his presidency.
Not long after Mr. Gates settles into his house in Washington State, the term will expire for the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Adm. Mike Mullen, who, like the defense secretary, was appointed by President George W. Bush. And a week ago, Deputy Secretary of State James B. Steinberg announced that he was leaving for an academic job — removing one of the crucial players in Mr. Obama’s efforts to manage China’s rise…
White House officials, not surprisingly, will not say. But they acknowledge that Mr. Gates, a former director of the Central Intelligence Agency who first worked in the White House when Mr. Obama was in junior high school, is an unusual figure. Outsiders say that finding someone who replicates each of Mr. Gates’s strengths — or his willingness to disagree with the emerging policy on Libya, as he did in private discussions before Mr. Obama’s final decision will be next to impossible.
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