After being endorsed by Bernie Sanders and ruling out Elisabeth Warren as VP, Hillary Clinton has set her eyes on James G. Stavridis, a retired four-star Navy admiral as her right arm.
According to several reports, Clinton has started the vetting process on Adm. Stavridis, who went into retirement in 2013 after serving four years as the first American naval officer to serve as NATO commander in Europe.
As a commander in NATO, he led operations in Afghanistan, Libya, Syria, and the African coast. Mr. Stavridis is also the dean of the Fletcher School at Tufts University and the chairman of the board of the U.S. Naval Institute.
The decorated Navy Admiral did an interview with a local paper a few years ago where he was asked to share his experience as a NATO commander. He said:
“It is a very big job — the first supreme allied commander, in fact, was Gen. Dwight Eisenhower, who of course went on to be president of the U.S. My key operations were Afghanistan, Libya, the Balkans, Syria, piracy off the coast of Africa, cyber defense of our computer networks, and missile defense against Iranian and Syrian ballistic missiles.”
He added:
“NATO is a big operation — 28 nations, 50 percent of the world’s Gross Domestic Product, 3 million men and women under arms, about $900 billion in defense spending. So it was a very busy time. We had a very successful operation in Libya, we have kept the peace in the Balkans, there is lots of progress in Afghanistan (although clearly some way to go), piracy has been reduced by 80 percent, and both our cyber and missile defenses are strong. We also cut overhead by 35 percent and reduced from 11 major HQ to only six, saving the nations quite a bit of money. So overall, I’m happy with my four years.”
While Mrs. Clinton has declined to comment on the story, a source close to her has confirmed that she is interested in having Mr. Stavridis as a running mate because of his impressive military experience.
Donald Trump was also interested in someone with a military background and was vetting retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn as his vice president, but by the looks of things he has opted for former House Speaker Newt Gingrich.
Mr. Gingrich is supposed to leave his post as a commentator on Fox News amid talks that he might be Trump’s pick. However, this election cycle has been nothing but normal, believe it or not, after CNN and MSNBC had broken the potential VP news, Gingrich was on still on Fox talking about himself.
