There is something very Kansas about Robert Gates, the man President Bush has nominated to succeed William Webster as the new director of the CIA. His open face, wide-set eyes and ready grin, even his prematurely gray corn-silk hair, somehow evoke the state where he was born 47 years ago. At the same time, there is something very Washington about Gates -- the slightly self-satisfied air of the successful bureaucrat who has managed to survive in a city where survival is sometimes all it takes to succeed.
Gates may soon discover that the same techniques that helped him survive before have...