Pete Hegseth seems to imagine himself as a man of big ideas. Perhaps you’ve worked with someone like that: Every organization has “idea hamsters,” who spin in their wheels and toss out suggestions of wildly varying quality. Sometimes, such folks can be innovators—but more often, their scattershot enthusiasm and admiration of their own creativity result in half-baked proposals that create more work, less productivity, and distractions from the real problems.

Hegseth had a lot of ideas during his State of the Force address to troops at the Marine Corps Base Quantico yesterday, and some of them, at least as a starting point for policies, had merit. Unfortunately, these few moments of sense were lost in a fog of clichés, culture-war resentments, and trademark Hegseth corniness.

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