Sen. John McCain, incoming chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said he has told the White House that former Sen. Joe Lieberman should be the next secretary of defense.
McCain made the suggestion when White House Chief of Staff Denis McDonough contacted him seeking a recommendation.
The Arizona Republican told
The Washington Post he doubted that President Barack Obama would take his advice and choose Lieberman to replace current Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel, who announced his resignation last week.
Lieberman, a Democratic senator from Connecticut from 1989 to 2013, was Vice President Al Gore's running mate in the 2000 presidential election and unsuccessfully sought the Democratic nomination in 2004.
In 2008, however, Lieberman endorsed McCain, the Republican nominee, over Obama, and he has been sharply critical of Obama's handling of foreign policy.
"Some terrible things could happen . . . for us if [Obama] doesn't turn it around," Lieberman said in a
June speech. "If you wanted to get a sense of imagining without too much of the horrific about what the world would look like without active American leadership, look at the world today."
"It's not collapsing, but as my friend said, it seems to be going to hell," he added.
Lieberman slammed Obama
for sending "a message to our allies and enemies . . . [that] we're not willing to put our muscle behind our values."
"When other powers — Iran, Russia, and China — have acted aggressively, we have reacted ambivalently, slowly or not all," Lieberman wrote in a July 31 op-ed published in
The Wall Street Journal.
In negotiations over Iran's nuclear program, the Obama administration and the Europeans have persuaded Arab allies such as Saudi Arabia that the United States is "naïve," Lieberman said — so much so that the Saudis are looking for ways to obtain their own nuclear weapons.
He added that in its attempts to broker a ceasefire during this summer's war between Israel and Hamas, "the White House seemed to be siding with Qatar and Turkey, supporters of Hamas," and against Israel and relatively moderate Arab states such as Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia.
Last week,
Texas Sen. Ted Cruz urged the president to consider Lieberman for the Pentagon post, calling him a "strong option" and someone with "deep experience and unshakable commitment to the security of the United States."
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