Hagel was an enlisted man, as was I. Having seen poor leadership and been the recipient of stupid orders it was enlightening to work for General JJ Lindsay on his XVIII Airborne Corps Staff as his NCOIC (He was also my first Infantry Battalion Commander in the 82nd). This was because Lindsay was too a former enlisted man who received a battlefield commission on D-Day, and one morning I had the occasion to ask him why it appeared that his entire officer staff, to include one of the other two generals in the command group were former enlisted. To this he responded that having had to do police calls at Fort Bragg as a inductee and been on the bad side of orders, he felt that only those who had been led, and led by poor leadership would have the insight to issue orders that would be well thought and seen from the eyes of someone who actually was going to do the work.
The only good I can see in Hagel is that he too has seen poor leadership and hopefully that one single facet of his heading DOD if it happens is that he knows grunt work. As for his politics, I could not disagree more as I served two years in Tel Aviv at the American Embassy and support that country for several reasons, one of which is Western Civilization; that other is that our Stock Market is very inter-connected with stocks well represented in the Jewish State.