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As far as I can tell, the sum total of this man’s intelligence background is seven months on HPSCI. His primary “qualification” appears to be attacking the Mueller investigation.
Dan Coats spent much of his long Senate career on SSCI. Every prior DNI had a long history with either the IC or an intelligence role in the military. I wasn’t wild about many of them, but they at least had résumés that made sense for the job.
To be clear: It’d be great to tap someone with deep knowledge of intel whose background isn’t necessarily within the IC. But Ratcliffe has had an oversight role for less than a year. There’s zero reason anyone would consider him for this post other than rabid fealty to Trump.
“Obama and/or Obama administration official was unqualified too!” is, perhaps, a clever thing to say if you want to have a “which team is more bad?” argument. But it suggests a weird indifference to whether, in fact, the Director of National Intelligence is fit for the job.
“That qualified person was bad at the job though!” is, while sometimes true, not actually a good argument for picking someone unqualified. It’s an argument for making a better choice among qualified candidates.
