Tulsi Gabbard’s confirmation to serve as the director of national intelligence once seemed in doubt. Republican senators voiced private skepticism about her qualifications, and her stances on Russia and Syria were at odds with the party’s old positions. But, on a party-line vote on Wednesday, the Senate approved Ms. Gabbard to serve in the senior intelligence post.
After all of the Republicans on the Senate Intelligence Committee endorsed her nomination, her confirmation was all but assured. Those private worries of Republican lawmakers never became significant public opposition. Elon Musk, President Trump’s billionaire ally, took to task one Republican whose vote was in doubt, and Ms. Gabbard worked the halls to win over the support of the wavering lawmakers.
Here are four takeaways about Ms. Gabbard’s road to confirmation and her mandate going forward.
It is very hard to vote down a cabinet member.
When Mr. Trump made his initial announcements of his choices for key roles in his cabinet, there was lots of hand-wringing, even from some Republican senators. One pick, former Representative Matt Gaetz of Florida, withdrew after his first day of concerted lobbying in Senate offices. But Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Kash Patel and Ms. Gabbard hung on, working Republican senators who were on the fence. Democrats were unimpressed with Ms. Gabbard’s efforts. But that did not matter. She won over all but one of the Republicans.
The bottom line is that it is all but impossible to defeat a cabinet member on the floor of the Senate in the current age. No nominee has been rejected since 1989, when John Tower, President George H.W. Bush’s pick for defense secretary, was rejected, 47 to 53. Since then, cabinet nominees facing doubts in Congress have withdrawn. But a nominee with the support of the president, and the tenacity to take criticism, has a good chance of getting through.
Gabbard stood her ground on Edward Snowden.
Ms. Gabbard adjusted her position on warrantless wiretaps of overseas communications. She promised not to oppose reauthorization of the measure, a key switch in time that reassured Senator Tom Cotton of Arkansas, the Republican chairman of the Intelligence Committee, and Senator Todd Young, Republican of Indiana and one of the fence sitters.
But Ms. Gabbard stood her ground on Edward Snowden, the former intelligence contractor who released a huge amount of classified information on secret surveillance programs.
Ms. Gabbard and lawmakers knew going into her confirmation hearing that Mr. Snowden would be a flashpoint. But few expected the fireworks that erupted. Denouncing him as a traitor, as both Republicans and Democrats wanted her to do, would have been the politically expedient position. Even Mr. Snowden, from his refuge in Russia, encouraged her to distance herself from him.
But Ms. Gabbard, long a defender of privacy rights and a skeptic of government surveillance, refused to say the word “traitor.” Instead, she stuck to her promise that under her leadership, whistle-blowers would have legal ways to report their concerns about government programs that they believed had overreached.
The most important job is briefing the president.
The director of national intelligence has broad authority to set intelligence-collection priorities and coordinate the work of the various intelligence agencies. But the director does not run those agencies, which have their own leadership.
The most important role of the director of national intelligence is gathering the intelligence from those agencies and presenting it to the president in a daily brief. In his first term, Mr. Trump sometimes clashed with his briefers. The most skilled of them had to work hard to present him information that he might not want to hear — including about Russian influence operations.
In Ms. Gabbard, Mr. Trump has someone who largely shares his worldview on terrorism, the importance of better relations with Russia, skepticism of the Ukrainian government and the danger of endless wars. In her confirmation hearing, Democrats were skeptical that she would be willing to tell Mr. Trump something he did not want to hear. But Republicans came around to the view that as long as Ms. Gabbard pledged not to undermine their priorities, it was important for Mr. Trump to have his person in a key advisory role.
Old issues are going to get a new look.
Ms. Gabbard has repeatedly said her top priority is to depoliticize the intelligence community and focus it on its core mission: the objective collection of information. What that will mean in practice is not entirely clear. But she is going to be conducting a review of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, and efforts like the Foreign Malign Influence Center, which has been criticized by Republicans, are likely to get a hard look.
Ms. Gabbard also promised senators of both parties that she would review some old intelligence issues, including the origin of the coronavirus pandemic, unidentified aerial phenomena and the mysterious ailments known as Havana Syndrome, which spies and diplomats have reported over the years.
