It’s politics. These are political roles. It’s organizational leading and having people in place who are aligned with your goals, not splicing DNA.
And we’ve had the qualified one who got 90 Senate votes in confirmation and what did that get us? The Iraq War and the Afghan departure with abandoned locals falling off airplanes.
It’s laughable when the idea of checking the same boxes that always get checked is “qualified”.
We're talking about the DOD here, not Transportation Secretary.
And this conversation is in the context that these are the same people who are "rooting out the disease of DEI", Red Scare style, in order to "promote meritocracy".
As for whether qualified leaders got us into wars we should never have gotten into (Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, etc.) that's a whole other conversation.