The narrowness of Obama’s national security picks: If you liked Les Aspin . . .

I cannot remember another modern administration that pulled almost all its top national security officials from the Congress. Right now we have former members of Congress as the secretary of defense, secretary of state, president, and vice president. They are advised by a national security advisor and deputy national security advisor with backgrounds as Capitol Hill staffers. And now the president is said to be considering replacing the current people at State and Defense with two other senators — John Kerry and Chuck Hagel.

Wait a minute. I thought diversity was a good thing! How about some people with backgrounds in academia (such as William Perry, who was a fine secretary of defense, or George Shultz), corporate America (such as David Packard), Wall Street (see Robert Lovett), the law (Edwin Stanton, Henry Stimson, Caspar Weinberger), career-track federal service (Robert Gates), or the military (George Marshall or Colin Powell)? How about people who have actually run something (members of Congress don’t run anything but their offices).

President Obama’s nightmare is said to be following in the tracks of LBJ — that is, having a great domestic agenda undercut by backing into war. But he might pay more attention to JFK, who had a narrow team of advisors who thought they were smarter than everyone else. I think Obama is unnecessarily creating a vulnerability — that is, why voluntarily wear blinders by getting people largely experienced in one relatively small aspect of the world? There is a reason that diversity is not just right but also smart practice. You’d think Obama would understand that.