Robert Gates, who served under former Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama as Pentagon chief, was asked during his interview with CBS’s “Face the Nation” if former Vice President Joe Biden would be an effective commander-in-chief.
Gates had written in his memoir, Duty, how he thinks Biden has been wrong on every major foreign policy issue for the last 40 years. In the interview, Gates said he still stands by those remarks and said he does not know if Biden would make an effective commander in chief.
Despite his perceived wrongness on policy issues, Gates still says he considers Biden to be a man of integrity and “impossible not to like.”
“I don’t know. I don’t know. I think — I stand by that statement,” said Gates.
“He and I agreed on some key issues in the Obama Administration. We disagreed significantly on Afghanistan and some other issues. I think that the vice president had some issues with the military, so how he would get along with senior military and what that relationship would be, I just … it would depend on the personalities at the time,” he explained.
Gates also said the ages of Biden, who at 76 is a year older than Gates, and Sen. Bernie Sanders, 77, are problematic when someone is trying to take on the responsibilities of the presidency.
“I think I’m pretty busy and pretty active, but I think having a president who is somebody our age or older, in the case of Sen. Sanders, is … I think it’s problematic. I think that you don’t have the kind of energy that I think is required to be president. I think — I’m not sure you have the intellectual acuity that you might have had in your 60s,” he said.
