Gen. Martin Dempsey, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, was asked in an interview whether he feels his office is being “micromanaged” by the Obama administration, a volatile question that he answered by first jokingly referring his interviewer to the White House.
His remarks came after a question from Fox News’ Chris Wallace, who cited a recent poll by the Military Times that showed only 15 percent of active-duty service members approved of President Obama’s performance. “Why do, in your opinion, so many service members have doubts about this president?” Wallace asked.
Dempsey at first responded by the book, but caught himself halfway through his answer to address longtime rumors about the White House and its supposed micromanaging of other offices: “What I tell the troops when I travel around is: The commander in chief supports their efforts, and that I can tell them with great confidence that he takes — you know, this is this issue of whether or not I’m being micromanaged, right?”
“It’s not just the troops on the ground,” Wallace said. “You have the two last secretaries of defense, [former Secretary Leon] Panetta and [former Secretary Robert] Gates both wrote searing books in which they criticized the White House for micromanaging, jumping the chain of command, and for sometimes emphasizing politics over policy. Are they right?”
“You mean, am I being micromanaged? Is that the question?” Dempsey asked, a slight smile on his face.
“That’s one of the questions,” Wallace stated.
“If you asked me if I’m being micromanaged, I don’t know, I better go ask the White House before I answer the question,” Dempsey laughed.
Dempsey added more seriously: “It’s the wrong metric. What I can tell you is the metric we should be focused on is access and whether my advice influences decisions. I have frequent access to the commander in chief. I feel no constraints in providing my advice to him, and that my advice over the past three and half years has influenced his decisions.
“You know, whether someone wants to characterize the desire, the almost insatiable appetite for information about complex issues as ‘micromanaging,’ they can have at it,” he added. “But for me, the metric is access and advice.”
