(WASHINGTON) — President Obama intends to nominate former Deputy Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter as the new secretary of defense, ABC News has confirmed. A formal announcement is likely to come by the end of the week.
If confirmed, Carter would replace Chuck Hagel, who announced last week that he was stepping down as defense secretary.
Sen. John McCain, who will become chairman of the Armed Services Committee, says he does not anticipate Carter will face a tough confirmation fight to be defense secretary.
"He’s not controversial,” McCain, R-Ariz., told ABC News Tuesday. "He’s qualified and he’s the last man standing, but he’s been around long enough to know he will have little or no voice in the crucial decisions on national security.”
Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., the outgoing chairman of the Armed Services Committee, told ABC News that Carter was "highly qualified." He said confirmation hearings should begin immediately.
McCain said he wouldn't object to the hearings starting before Republicans take control of the Senate next month. But he said the hearings would likely focus less on Carter's qualifications than on Obama's strategy on ISIS.
McCain, who has been one of the loudest critics of the president's foreign policy, said that it barely mattered who the president selected as his fourth defense secretary, because all decisions are made inside the West Wing.
“All decision making is amongst a handful of people in the White House who only have one thing in common — that they don’t know anything about the military," McCain said.
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