Whither Wolfowitz?

Today’s Washington Post has a pretty sympathetic profile of Paul Wolfowitz. Two minor quibbles, however. First, it contains this statement: No deputy secretary of defense has ever held the prominence that Wolfowitz has had over the last two years. He is widely seen inside the Pentagon as the most likely replacement if Defense Secretary Donald ...

By , a professor of international politics at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University and co-host of the Space the Nation podcast.

Today's Washington Post has a pretty sympathetic profile of Paul Wolfowitz. Two minor quibbles, however. First, it contains this statement:

Today’s Washington Post has a pretty sympathetic profile of Paul Wolfowitz. Two minor quibbles, however. First, it contains this statement:

No deputy secretary of defense has ever held the prominence that Wolfowitz has had over the last two years. He is widely seen inside the Pentagon as the most likely replacement if Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld steps down.

That ignores a hell of a lot of chatter saying the opposite. Mickey Kaus collects some press clippings arguing that Wolfowitz is actually on the outs with the administration. For example, Time says:

The Rummy and Wolfie show may soon go off the air. It is widely believed in national-security circles that Wolfowitz may leave the Administration sometime in 2004. He has become too controversial for Bush to promote to Defense Secretary; Wolfowitz believed that U.S. troops in Iraq would be greeted with rose petals.

UPDATE: Kaus now has chatter that contradicts his previously collected chatter:

Kf has received an email from a trusted oracular Bush source suggesting not: “The guy spreading it is free-lancing.” … You mean a distinguished journalist like Robert Novak–who wrote that Wolfowitz had fallen from favor–would be carrrying water for a source? I don’t believe it! … (emphases in original)

Second quibble — the story has the following criticism:

Some see Wolfowitz’s views on the Middle East as dangerously naive. “Wolfowitz doesn’t know much about the business he’s in,” says retired Marine Gen. Joseph Hoar, a former chief of the Central Command, the U.S. military headquarters for the region. “He knows very little about war fighting. And he knows very little about the Middle East, aside from maybe Israel.”

Shouldn’t the Post have mentioned that Hoar is now on Howard Dean’s list of foreign policy advisors? And what, exactly, does Hoar mean by that last clause? UPDATE: TNR’s &c. has more Wolfowitz.

Daniel W. Drezner is a professor of international politics at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University and co-host of the Space the Nation podcast. Twitter: @dandrezner

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