The Washington Post’s Walter Pincus compares Chuck Hagel, former senator and nominee to be secretary of defense, to the late Les Aspin, the former congressman who became Bill Clinton’s first secretary of defense.

As one of Aspin’s long-term friends, I was among those who warned him that he had to shape up if he took the Pentagon job. His every step would be weighed by the military, from the Joint Chiefs on down the chain of command.

I was sitting in the stands at Fort Myer during Aspin’s welcoming ceremony in 1993. I will never forget the murmurs among the officers and enlisted men around me when Aspin, slouching and out of step, reviewed the troops.

Almost immediately he faced complicated issues, but Aspin’s easy-going style never gained much respect within “the building” — the Pentagon. Criticized for Somalia decisions and troubled by a heart problem, he resigned in early 1994.

The irony about Hagel’s hearing performance is that it hid his feisty personality and left the impression he could be pushed around. More than a half-dozen times he apologized for making perfectly acceptable statements, sometimes not bothering to correct senators who took those statements out of context.

He seemed to forget — or never realized — that he had that equally important audience at the Pentagon and on military bases around the world.

Pincus insists Chuck Hagel is feisty. Perhaps.

But Hagel is also the man who told the Senate Armed Services Committee:

A number of questions were asked of me today about specific programs. Submarine programs, different areas of technology and acquisitions, our superior technology. And I’ve said I don’t know enough about it. I don’t. There are a lot of things I don’t know about. If confirmed, I intend to know a lot more than I do. I’ll have to. At the same time, I would never think this about me or that I will be running anything.

Does that sound like a man who can’t wait to get into the job? Does that sound like a man whose passion and drive will keep him going during the long hours and grueling schedule?

If confirmed, how quickly does Hagel burn out in the job? A year? Two years?

The global elites who relentlessly cheered and applauded Barack Obama from the moment he appeared on the national stage suddenly realize the leader of the free world and arsenal of democracy is now managed by a quasi-isolationist:

As President Barack Obama starts his second term, the world’s business and political elite pines for greater American engagement to tackle a thicket of security challenges.

From Syria to Mali, from Iran to the South China Sea, the United States’ reluctance to be drawn into conflicts far from its shores was a leitmotiv of geopolitical debate at this year’s World Economic Forum in Davos.

The absence of top Obama administration officials from the annual brainstorming and networking event in the Swiss mountains symbolized to some a perceived pullback from global leadership, even though it was Inauguration Week in Washington.

In the Washington Post this morning, Bob Woodward writes about the philosophy that defense-secretary nominee Chuck Hagel and President Obama share:

So, this thinking goes, the U.S. role in the world must be carefully scaled back — this is not a matter of choice but of facing reality; the military needs to be treated with deep skepticism; lots of strategic military and foreign policy thinking is out of date; and quagmires like Afghanistan should be avoided.

So those who are expecting the U.S. to take a leadership role from Syria to Mali, from Iran to the South China Sea . . . well, it appears that thinking is “out of date.”

Here’s a fun question for Chuck Hagel’s confirmation hearing: does he still support reinstating the draft, as he suggested in 2004?

Speaking at a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing on post-occupation Iraq, Sen. Chuck Hagel, R-Neb., said, “There’s not an American … that doesn’t understand what we are engaged in today and what the prospects are for the future.”

Hagel, a member of the committee, says all Americans should be involved in the effort.

“Why shouldn’t we ask all of our citizens to bear some responsibility and pay some price?” Hagel said, arguing that restoring the draft would force “our citizens to understand the intensity and depth of challenges we face.”

The senator also argued re-instituting the draft, which ended in the early ’70s, would cause the burden of military service to be spread among all economic classes of people.

“Those who are serving today and dying today are the middle class and lower middle class,” he claimed.

While the Iraq war is over, what Hagel described at that hearing remains in place today — those in the military are middle class and lower middle class, and they are serving and dying in Afghanistan.

Hagel later said he wasn’t directly advocating reinstating the draft but that he wanted a national debate on the subject, contending he’s “not so sure it’s a bad idea.” He also supported the idea of “mandatory national service” for all Americans.

From the first Morning Jolt of the first full week of 2013…

The Hagel Hullabaloo: Conflict-Hungry President Picks His Next Fight

It’s official: “President Obama plans to nominate former senator Chuck Hagel, a Nebraska Republican and Vietnam veteran, to be secretary of defense on Monday, according to a person close to the process and a senior administration official. The White House informed the Hagel camp over the weekend that Obama intends to announce the nomination at the White House on Monday.”

So, how does that confirmation fight look?

Sen. Ted Cruz, a Republican freshman from Texas elected with strong backing from the tea party, said on “Fox News Sunday” that it was “very difficult to imagine a circumstance in which I could support (Hagel’s) confirmation.”

“It’s interesting, the president seems bound and determined to proceed down this path despite the fact that Hagel’s record is very, very troubling on the nation of Israel,” Cruz said. “He has not been a friend to Israel. And in my view the United States should stand unshakably with Israel.”

Sen. Mitch McConnell, the Republican leader in the Senate, was softer in his tone toward Hagel, saying the former senator from Nebraska would receive a “thorough vetting” just like any other presidential nominee.

Robert Reich: “Wonder why the President is willing to spend his precious political capital getting Chuck Hagel confirmed as Defense Secretary.”

Because ever since he won reelection, he’s eager to pick fights to prove he can win them? Peggy Noonan summarized it this weekend:

I doubt now he has any intention of working with them on big reforms, of battling out a compromise at a conference table, of having long walks and long talks and making offers that are serious, that won’t be changed overnight to something else. The president intends to consistently beat his opponents and leave them looking bad, or, failing that, to lose to them sometimes and then make them look bad. That’s how he does politics.

Why?

Here’s my conjecture: In part it’s because he seems to like the tension. He likes cliffs, which is why it’s always a cliff with him and never a deal. He likes the high-stakes, tottering air of crisis. Maybe it makes him feel his mastery and reminds him how cool he is, unrattled while he rattles others. He can take it. Can they?

 Lindsey Graham seems to concur with that theory:

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) on Sunday expressed dismay at reports President Obama would tap former Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-Neb.) for Secretary of Defense, calling it an “in your face” selection.

“I like Chuck Hagel. He served with distinction in Vietnam as an enlisted man — two Purple Hearts. But quite frankly Chuck Hagel is out of the mainstream of thinking on most issues regarding foreign policy,” said Graham in an interview on CNN’s “State of the Union.”

“He has long severed his ties with the Republican party. This is an in your face nomination of the president to all of us who are supportive of Israel,” he added. “I don’t know what his management experience is in regards to the Pentagon or global if anyway, so I think it’s an extremely controversial choice.”

Say, John Aravosis, how will gays welcome Hagel’s nomination? “Hagel’s public record on gay rights is abominable… I’m willing to believe that the man has changed in the past two years (though it seems awfully opportune). but I’d like some proof, or at the very least, a convincing explanation. We’re received neither.”

(sigh) …Here we go again.

THE MAYAN PROPHECIES ARE TRUE! THIS IS THE LAST MORNING JOLT!!!! … Until January 2.

Actually, I did briefly think the Mayans knew something awful was going to happen this morning, when I couldn’t get my laptop to turn on. As you undoubtedly know, taking your computer to the tech guy at Staples or Best Buy or wherever is like a child going to the Principal’s office — all of a sudden, with a disapproving glare, the laptop’s behavior suddenly improves.

So in today’s slightly abbreviated edition of the Jolt:

Why Are Republicans Skeptical of Hagel? Hey, Why Are Democrats So Enthusiastic About Him?

Suddenly I get the feeling that Chuck Hagel’s expected nomination to be the next Secretary of Defense could very well end up succumbing to a left-right pincer movement of opposition.

Take a look at the latest Hagel nomination complication:

Former Sen. Chuck Hagel — a finalist for the post of Secretary of Defense in Obama’s second term — once opposed a nominee to be U.S. Ambassador to Luxembourg because he was “openly aggressively gay.”

“Ambassadorial posts are sensitive,” Hagel told to the Omaha World-Herald in 1998, opposing the nomination of philanthropist James Hormel. “They are representing America,” he said. “They are representing our lifestyle, our values, our standards. And I think it is an inhibiting factor to be gay — openly aggressively gay like Mr. Hormel — to do an effective job.”

Some LGBT rights groups are already criticizing the potential selection of Hagel to replaced Leon Panetta.

Delicious. Think about how much we’ve had it pounded into our heads over the past fourteen years, by our media and political elites, that the act of believing that homosexuality is immoral or some sort of flaw represents the worst of hatred and bigotry in the modern world. And now think of all of those folks having to insist that the declaration “it is an inhibiting factor to be gay — openly aggressively gay like Mr. Hormel — to do an effective job” is no big deal. Obama and his friends are going to have to tie themselves into pretzels over this.

Sonny Bunch: “It really is remarkable how quickly Hagel’s chorus of supporters clammed up after the ‘aggressively gay’ comments came up. I’m impressed!”

Man, imagine what Hagel would think of a gay Zionist.

But gay and lesbian Democrats might not be the only folks shifting uncomfortably in their chairs as they examine Hagel’s past record. Matt Cooper writes:

It’s Hagel’s work on the environment that may prove to be a more nagging question — one hardly likely to derail a potential nomination but interesting nonetheless.

One of the first high profile things that Hagel worked on after coming to the U.S. Senate in 1997 was going after the Kyoto climate accord. He was a congressional observer at the meeting and, along with the late coal champion Sen. Robert Byrd, authored the resolution against it.

To be fair, that measure passed 95-0 and Hagel’s objections echoed that of many members, namely that too little was being asked of mega-polluters India and China. But it portended future opposition to environmental measures. Daily Kos reminds us that former Bush Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill recounts how, with Dick Cheney’s prodding, Hagel wrote a letter questioning new emissions standards put out by Christie Whitman’s EPA. Their full account is here.

All of this is relevant to the defense secretary’s job because of the huge energy impact the Pentagon has with all those ships, planes, trucks, troops, missiles, and helicopters.

So the anti-Hagel coalition is likely to include Iran outreach skeptics, defense spending fans, friends of Israel, gays and lesbians, and environmentalists. He’s a uniter, not a divider?

Alana Goodman, writing over at Contentions:

“Why make Democratic senators . . . walk the plank on this, when by finding a qualified Democrat, we can please the base?” a Jewish organization official told Mike Allen in the story above. Walking the plank is a good way to put it.

If Hagel is nominated, he will most likely get through, but it will be brutal for Democrats. Not just the confirmation process–though it will be embarrassing and damaging for Obama to have to defend some of the statements and positions Hagel’s critics will drag out. The real damage would come later–think of how the left demonized Donald Rumsfeld. Every move Hagel makes would be scrutinized and politicized. Anything controversial would be hung around the necks of the Democratic Party. For the most part, Republicans have gone easy on Obama’s defense secretaries, but that would change.

Josh Greenman, of the New York Daily News, summarizes what he calls the “Hagelian dialectic: trial balloon, thesis, antithesis, synthesis, nomination of someone else for Defense Secretary.”