It can be tempting, if you are not a Washington insider or intimate, to put the Chuck Hagel business out of mind. Or try, anyway. He did so badly in the confirmation hearings that, as Stephen Hayes writes, “any senator who takes the advise-and-consent role seriously had to have real concerns about [Hagel’s] basic competence.” Still, presidents are entitled to appoint the people they want, you think, even when they are, manifestly, not the best possible choice or even up to the job. The republic has survived a lot of bad cabinet officers who, like Hagel, had baggage. And like them, he will serve and then move on. As will the country. It isn’t the Supreme Court, you think. It’s not for life.

But, then, this is not just any old cabinet post. Hagel will not be running the Department of Commerce. He will be the secretary of defense. The history of this post is not a roll call of political hacks but of very large and sometimes tragic figures, some of whom the nation is fortunate to have survived.