A Return to Professionalism

What Obama's Pentagon hires say about his presidential style.

By Fred Kaplan
Posted Thursday, Jan. 8, 2009, at 6:48 PM ET

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President-elect Barack Obama named the Pentagon's deputy secretaries and undersecretaries today, and, like many of his other appointments, they signal a return to professionalism. It's not a revolution—except that, after the last eight years, restoration is revolutionary.

The nominee for deputy secretary of defense—whose job is to manage the Pentagon, not create policy—is William J. Lynn III, who, during Bill Clinton's presidency, served as the Defense Department's comptroller and director of its office of program analysis and evaluation.