So now it’s official: Chuck Hagel, the former Republican senator, is President Obama’s pick to be the next Secretary of Defense. Ignoring complaints by certain pro-Israel and gay-rights groups, Obama appeared with Hagel at the White House and described him as “the leader who our troops deserve”—a man who would be the first enlisted soldier and the first Vietnam veteran to run the Pentagon.

The announcement sets the stage for weeks of partisan bickering and theatrical hearings on the Hill. The White House is clearly betting that enough Republicans will ultimately back Hagel, or not actively oppose him, for his nomination to be approved, and it may well be right. In the past few days, several Republican supporters of Israel, including Dov Zakheim, the former Bush Administration official and noted neocon, have emerged to defend Hagel against charges that he is anti-Israel, or anti-Semitic. As the White House ceremony was taking place, Colin Powell, the former Secretary of State, added his name to the list of Hagel supporters. These interventions seem to be having an effect. In his blog for The Atlantic, Jeff Goldberg points out that it is not even clear that AIPAC, the most powerful pro-Israel lobbying group in Washington, will wage an all-out assault on Hagel’s nomination.

As my colleagues Connie Bruck and Amy Davidson have persuasively pointed out, the outrage about some of Hagel’s statements on Israel is trumped up and silly. We need more people in Washington who take a clear-eyed view of the U.S-Israel relationship, and who are willing to criticize the government in Jerusalem when it does something stupid or wrong. Not that Hagel hasn’t, on occasion, made some questionable statements, such as when he criticized the nomination of the philanthropist James C. Hormel as ambassador to Luxembourg on the grounds Hormel was “openly, aggressively gay.” But since that incident took place fourteen years ago, and Hagel has now apologized for it, many people will be willing to overlook it.

Given Hagel’s reputation as a straight shooter and his personal history with Obama—in 2008, they toured Iraq and Afghanistan together—I can see why the President would want him on his team. Given the lingering possibility of a military attack on Iran by Israel, or by Israel and the United States, I also think it would be reassuring to have in place a Defense Secretary who adopts a “realist” approach to international affairs, and who is skeptical about the efficacy of military action. But despite all of this, I do have a couple of questions about the nomination:

First: What has Obama got against nominating a Democrat as Secretary of Defense? Second: How conservative do you have to be to be disqualified from serving in a Democratic cabinet?

In case you’ve forgotten, this is the second time Obama has picked a Republican to run the Pentagon. In 2009, he left Bob Gates, one of George W. Bush’s top aides, in place. When Gates resigned, in 2011, Obama did tap a Democrat—Leon Panetta—to serve out his first term. Now he’s picked another lifelong Republican. And in so doing, he has overlooked the claims of two well-regarded Democratic officials who served under Gates: Ashton Carter, the deputy secretary of defense, and Michèle Flournoy, the former undersecretary for policy, who is the highest-ranking woman to have served at the Pentagon. In an article about the forthcoming nomination back in November, a reporter for Stars and Stripes, the military newspaper, noted of Carter and Flournoy: “Both would come to the job with a deep understanding of the challenges facing the U.S. military, and both are steeped in Pentagon practice.”

Obama chose to pick an outsider, which is fair enough. In Monday’s appearance with Hagel and John Brennan, the counterterrorism chief who is his choice to head the C.I.A., he repeatedly praised the Nebraska native as somebody who had served at the sharp end of military conflict. But it is not as if there is a shortage of Democratic veterans who know a lot about the Pentagon. In the past few years, two of them have been serving on the Senate Armed Services Committee: Jack Reed, of Rhode Island, and Jim Webb, of Virginia. Reed, unlike Hagel, voted against the resolution that authorized war in Iraq. Webb has just retired from the Senate, and, presumably, he needs something to do.

Of course, neither Reed nor Webb broke with their party to support Obama’s line on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. And, unlike Hagel, who for the past few years has co-chaired the President’s Intelligence Advisory Board, a committee of outside defense experts, neither Reed nor Webb has had any role in his Administration. (The fact that Webb publicly criticized Obamacare probably didn’t help his chances, either.) Going into his second term, Obama clearly wants people on his national-security team with whom he feels comfortable: Hagel, John Brennan, and Senator John Kerry. That’s understandable and defensible, but it doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t take a more leisurely look at Hagel’s record.

For the moment, let’s set aside Hagel’s initial support for the war in Iraq and the fact that, back in 2000, he was seriously considered for the post of George W.’s running mate. (According to Barton Gellman’s book about Dick Cheney, he was one of a dozen candidates who went as far as filling in a detailed questionnaire and sending it to Cheney, who was heading the search process.) Let’s even give him a pass on being wrong on General David Petraeus’s “Iraq surge,” which pacified Iraq sufficiently for the locals to put together a government and the American forces to beat a dignified retreat, and which Hagel opposed.

Let’s focus instead on Hagel’s over-all voting record in the Senate between 1997 and 2010, as recorded by the non-partisan Web site ontheissues.org, which gained him an eighty-four-per-cent approval rating from the American Conservative Union.

On economic issues, Hagel supported the Bush tax cuts, the G.O.P.’s calls for a balanced-budget amendment, and the 2001 bankruptcy law that made it harder for credit-card debtors to walk away from their debts. He voted against No Child Left Behind, a ban on drilling in the Arctic, more restrictions on the tobacco industry, and campaign-finance reform. He voted for means-testing Medicare, eliminating fuel-economy standards, and the partial privatization of Social Security. In short, he was a faithful supporter of pro-corporate, trickle-down policies.

When it comes to social issues, Hagel's record is, if anything, even more conservative. A lifelong Roman Catholic, he is strongly anti-abortion and consistently voted to restrict its availability. Based on this history, the abortion rights group NARAL gave him a zero rating, and the National Right to Life Committee gave him a rating of a hundred per cent. He supported teacher-led prayer in schools: the Christian Coalition gave him its top rating of a hundred per cent. He was staunchly in favor of gun rights—he got an “A” rating from the N.R.A.—capital punishment, and the drug war.

Hagel’s more liberal views were largely restricted to immigration and infrastructure spending, both issues of concern to employers in his state. In the field of civil rights, he supported the Patriot Act and rebuffed efforts to preserve habeas corpus for prisoners at Guantánamo. He generally opposed affirmative-action efforts, and his 1998 statement about Ambassador Hormel was hardly an aberration. As Richard Socarides notes, he was against expanding same-sex domestic-partner benefits and expanding hate-crime laws to include sexual orientation. (The Human Rights Campaign gave him a zero rating, indicating an anti-gay right stance.) While his apology to Hormel and other gays and lesbians was commendable, it didn’t come until two weeks ago, when his nomination as Secretary of Defense was already being mooted.