Gates blasts Washington’s bitter partisanship

Former Defense Secretary Robert Gates on Tuesday evening slammed the state of Washington’s political environment, saying such actions as civility are now “relics” in the nation’s capital.

In his first major Washington comments since leaving the Pentagon earlier this year, Gates voiced concern about the viciously partisan tone of the nation’s politics.

“I’m deeply concerned about the decline of views and values associated with Brent Scowcroft when it comes to how we govern and relate to one another here at home,” Gates said at an Atlantic Council-sponsored gala honoring Scowcroft, a former national security adviser.

“Civility, mutual respect, putting country before self and country before party,” Gates said. “These virtues in this town are becoming … historic relics.”

He lauded Scowcroft, for whom he worked during the George H.W. Bush administration, for working during his 64-year career to find ways around political differences.

Scowcroft was national security adviser to Presidents Ford and George H.W. Bush, and served as President Nixon’s military assistant. He most recently helped President Obama form his national security team. Commissioned in 1947 as an officer in the Army Air Forces, which became the U.S. Air Force later that year, he rose to the rank of lieutenant general.

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