Wisconsin's Melvin Laird, the incoming Secretary of Defense, knows the Pentagon well. For 14 of his 16 years in the House, he served on the appropriations subcommittee handling military spending, and he has shown familiarity with national-security issues as a frequent critic of Democratic defense policies. The chink in Laird's armor is his lack of administrative experience, and last week he moved to close it with an impressive appointment. As his Deputy Secretary of Defense, No. 2 man in the Government's biggest department ($80 billion a year, a military and civilian personnel of 4,500,000),...
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