Gration voted for George W. Bush in 2000.[7] In 2006, he traveled to Africa on a five-nation, fifteen-day, fact-finding tour, accompanying Senator Barack Obama as an “African expert”.[11] He later endorsed Obama’s presidential campaign, citing that Obama had the “judgment, wisdom, courage, experience, and leadership capability that we desperately need.”[12]
In 2007, the Obama campaign “beg[a]n sending Gration out on the stump . . . in an effort to improve the inexperienced senator’s image on national security.”[7] According to Obama foreign policy advisor Denis McDonough, Gration was “considered one of Obama’s three top military advisers, along with Richard Danzig, the former secretary of the Navy during the Clinton administration, and Gen. Merrill McPeak, former Air Force chief of staff.”[7]
Press reports say that in 2009, as a senior official on Obama’s transition team, Gration called and emailed several of President Bush's Pentagon appointees to inform them they were being dismissed. Those calls and emails were followed up by an email from Jim O’Beirne, the special assistant to the secretary of defense for White House liaisons, who expressed exasperation that Gration informed the employees directly instead of letting O’Beirne’s office know first. A Pentagon spokesperson said Secretary of Defense Gates was “absolutely satisfied” with how the transition was handled.[13]
He started of as a child of African missionaries and ended up as a military man compromised by politicians. I can understand the need for compartmentalizing your life, if you have sold your values in pursuit of lucre.
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