“The secretary of the Army is probably not going to go out and initiate an action against an individual soldier who, in the conversation about how do you feel about ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ identified themselves as gay,” McHugh said during a breakfast with reporters. “I just thought it would be counterproductive … in engaging the force to take disciplinary action against someone who had spoken to me openly and honestly.”

McHugh himself agreed with Casey last month during the hearings, saying that “any number of current cases would be greatly complicated” by a moratorium. Top Democrats, who support repealing DADT, have questioned whether a review of the policy would be effective if discharges were to continue. They have also signaled their willingness to draft a legislative solution should the problem remain unaddressed.

– Nick McClellan

“I have no interest as either a Member of Congress or as … secretary of the Army to exclude by some categorization a group of people otherwise qualified to serve,” McHugh told Roll Call.

He noted that the Armed Services Committee has not considered the policy “in any formal way” since 1993. In the meantime, “certainly, the recruiting-age population’s views have changed on that whole matter,” he said.

Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said on Tuesday that McHugh shared Obama’s commitment to repealing the ban.

I think Charles Mahtesian’s take in Politico on the political strategems behind picking John McHugh to serve as Army Secretary is pretty shrewd. As with the co-optation of Jon Huntsman, Ray LaHood, and Robert Gates, Obama is acting in a canny way to not just be “bipartisan” but to undermine opposition to the progressive agenda. Mahtesian lays this all out quite well, but then offers this analogy:

All at once, Obama has selected a nominee who burnishes his bipartisan credentials, opened up a seat prime for Democratic pickup and drained the GOP reservoir of one of the few remaining Northeastern moderates.

It’s an event that’s happening with enough frequency to suggest the presence of a design, a plan that not only sketches the outline of a reelection strategy but manages to drive a wedge into the opposition at the same time. Call it a Sherman’s March in reverse — an audacious attempt by Obama to burn down any lines of escape for Republicans from their one refuge of popularity, the deep South.

I like Civil War history a lot, but I don’t really see the comparison here. A better analogy might be to say that FDR enacted a “Sherman’s March in reverse” using New Deal spending and the pre-WWII defense buildup to funnel funds to build up infrastructure in the South and keep oft-skeptical Dixiecrats in his political coalition. At any rate, interesting article.

We already have Robert Gates and Ray LaHood and Jon Huntsman, and now Carl Hulse reports that another Republicans will be joining the Obama administration as Rep John McHugh (R-NY) agrees to serve as Secretary of the Army:

Democrats say they would have a chance at winning the seat though it would still favor a Republican candidate. If Democrats were able to flip the representation, it would leave only two Republicans in the state’s 29-member House delegation with redistricting looming after the 2010 Census.

My guess is that the main political implications here relate to redistricting. Even if a Republican wins the seat, a cloutless freshperson is going to be a very likely candidate for getting screwed-over in a redistricting process that’s likely to require New York to eliminate a congressional district.