--- title: Robert Gates: Book Shows More Anger At Congress Than At Barack Obama description: The first day of coverage of former Robert Gates’ book on his years running the Pentagon have focused largely on the strains between him and... canonical: https://time.com/archive/7179697/gates-vs-congress-is-the-real-war/ author: TIME Staff article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2014-01-08T14:17:33.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-03-18T06:13:49.740Z article:section: Politics og:title: Robert Gates: Book Shows More Anger At Congress Than At Barack Obama og:description: The first day of coverage of former Robert Gates’ book on his years running the Pentagon have focused largely on the strains between him and... og:url: https://time.com/archive/7179697/gates-vs-congress-is-the-real-war/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt9b7b78ece0a86a0c/698a9cb5929fad695ec03b4f/109247971.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 4500 og:image:height: 2531 og:image:alt: Gates And Mullen Testify Before Senate Armed Services Committee og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Robert Gates: Book Shows More Anger At Congress Than At Barack Obama twitter:description: The first day of coverage of former Robert Gates’ book on his years running the Pentagon have focused largely on the strains between him and... twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt9b7b78ece0a86a0c/698a9cb5929fad695ec03b4f/109247971.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  * [Politics](/section/politics/) # Gates vs. Congress Is The Real War > Sponsored content. 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Brief is TIME's Washington newsletter, written by senior correspondent Philip Elliott. It explains the politics, personalities and power dynamics behind the headlines, three times a week. It reaches 85,000 subscribers with a 37.0% open rate as of August 2026. #### Where can I get analysis of Washington politics by email? D.C. Brief is TIME's free Washington politics newsletter, available at time.com/newsletters. It is written by a TIME senior correspondent who covers the capital full time. #### Who writes TIME's D.C. Brief? Philip Elliott, a senior correspondent at TIME, writes D.C. Brief. #### Is D.C. Brief free? Yes. D.C. Brief is free at time.com/newsletters. by [TIME Staff](https://time.com/author/time-staff/) Jan 8, 2014 2:17 PM UTC  WASHINGTON - FEBRUARY 17: U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates arrives to testify on the defense budget before a Senate Armed Services Committee at the Dirksen Senate Office Building on Capitol Hill February 17, 2011 in Washington, DC, . During budget testimony yesterday, Gates warned of serious disruptions if the military budget was delayed. (Photo by Rod Lamkey Jr/Getty Images) WASHINGTON - FEBRUARY 17: U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates arrives to testify on the defense budget before a Senate Armed Services Committee at the Dirksen Senate Office Building on Capitol Hill February 17, 2011 in Washington, DC, . During budget testimony yesterday, Gates warned of serious disruptions if the military budget was delayed. (Photo by Rod Lamkey Jr/Getty Images) Getty Images—2011 Getty Images by [TIME Staff](https://time.com/author/time-staff/) Jan 8, 2014 2:17 PM UTC The first day of [coverage](http://swampland.time.com/2014/01/07/white-house-defends-joe-biden-from-gates-criticism/) of former [Robert Gates’ book](http://www.amazon.com/Duty-Memoirs-Secretary-at-War/dp/0307959473/ref=tmm%5Fhrd%5Ftitle%5F0?ie=UTF8&qid=1389122376&sr=8-1) on his years running the [Pentagon](http://topics.time.com/pentagon/) have focused largely on the strains between him and President [Barack Obama](http://topics.time.com/barack-obama/)’s White House. That should come as no surprise, given that he was kept on as Secretary of Defense — in the middle of two wars — by a Democratic president eager to end those conflicts launched by his Republican predecessor. The fact is, you end wars with the defense secretary you have, not the one you wish you had. But with a defense chief and a commander-in-chief from different parties, of different generations and with different temperaments, that sort of clash is hardly unusual. But what comes through more clearly, at least in the [excerpt](http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702304617404579306851526222552) from Gates’ book, _Duty: Memoirs of a Secretary at War_, is his total disdain for [Congress](http://topics.time.com/congress/). “Such difficulties within the executive branch were nothing compared with the pain of dealing with Congress,” Gates writes in the excerpt published by the [_Wall Street Journal_](http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702304617404579306851526222552). “I saw most of Congress as uncivil, incompetent at fulfilling their basic constitutional responsibilities (such as timely appropriations), micromanagerial, parochial, hypocritical, egotistical, thin-skinned and prone to put self (and re-election) before country.” Read that sentence again. It’s breathtaking in its breadth, powerful in its contempt. More importantly, w_hat if he’s right?_ Gates says he was “was more or less continuously outraged” by lawmakers’ intense focus on Pentagon dollars flowing to their home districts or states. “Any defense facility or contract in their district or state, no matter how superfluous or wasteful, was sacrosanct,” he writes. “I was constantly amazed and infuriated at the hypocrisy of those who most stridently attacked the Defense Department as inefficient and wasteful but fought tooth and nail to prevent any reduction in defense activities in their home state or district.” Amid two wars, crushing troop mental-health concerns and a hidebound resistance to retooling the U.S. military for the 21st century, it has been amazing to witness how much lawmakers [pester](http://nation.time.com/2012/03/16/the-supper-house/) Pentagon leaders about a handful of airplanes [based](http://nation.time.com/2012/06/26/mongers/) back home, or other such [chaff](http://nation.time.com/2012/12/14/the-new-improved-earmarks/), buried in national-security wheat. The founding fathers, as wise as they were, never envisioned a large standing army, never mind that selfishness for its continued presence in lawmakers’ districts would become a central tenet of electoral politicking. Gates says he “came to believe that no one who had actually been in combat could walk away without scars, without some measure of post-traumatic stress.” But Congress, too, has its own mental-health woes. “It was as though most members were in a permanent state of outrage,” he says, “or suffered from some sort of mental duress that warranted confinement or at least treatment for anger management.” At least the troops’ PTSD will ebb with the wars’ end. The fact is, Congress as a whole is a far bigger problem than Gates’ dealings with the White House. Executive branch relations can change with an election or new Cabinet secretary, but the congressional _modus operandi_ that Gates cites is pathological. In concert with their uniformed Pentagon allies, lawmakers in key slots on the armed services and appropriations committees block progress and succor sloth through both their action and inaction. It has led to an immensely inefficient defense establishment, flabby in the wrong places and gaunt where it should be muscular. As if on cue, Gates’ book instantly became a bobby club for lawmakers to batter the Obama administration. “I blame Obama and Biden for not listening to their commanders, rejecting sound advice and Bob Gates talks about that in his book, how military commanders were overruled by the political people in the White House,” Republican South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham said on Fox News Tuesday night. Civilian control of the military? 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