I wanted to second Jonathan’s analysis of yesterday’s testimony by former Senator Chuck Hagel, who is hoping to become America’s 24th secretary of defense. 

It may be that another nominee for a cabinet post has been more inept than Hagel was during his hearing–but if so, I can’t think of who it might be. Mr. Hagel showed himself to be in turn evasive, ignorant, unprincipled, baffled and dim-witted. And those were the high points.

Perhaps the most alarming thing of all is that according to Bob Woodward of the Washington Post, Obama found in Hagel a “soul mate.” Woodward went on to say that the president and Hagel should “mind meld” on defense matters.

That the president would find himself so passionately attached to a man of such staggering incompetence is troubling in any case; but for Mr. Obama to want such a man to run the Pentagon is, to me, a genuinely alarming prospect. 

America’s best and bravest deserve to be led by someone far better than Chuck Hagel.