General Clapper is extremely qualified to be Director of National Intelligence (DNI) in terms of intelligence experience and management skills. Far too many senior management staff at CIA have proven incompetent time servers and selection of the DNI from the upper ranks of CIA would have to be done with extreme care.
The fact is however that no matter who is DNI, it is an untenable job. Although General Clapper supposedly received authority over 80 per cent of the intelligence budget my guess is that DOD and its friends in congress will make sure that he will be unable to exercise any real control over spending. Further no DNI appears to have had the full confidence of either President Bush or President Obama. With Leon Panetta as Director of CIA, that agency will continue to operate pretty much independent of the DNI. Finally the simple fact is that President Obama has apparently placed his full confidence in John Brennan and Brennan apparently thinks nothing of undercutting any intelligence official who might undermine his role as the Intelligence Authority for the President. If General Clapper would have asked me I would have told him to forget the DNI position and get himself a cushy job in private industry.
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