Fred Kaplan thinks its a good idea, and much has to do with how Gates works within the decision making process in the defense/security apparatus, and not around it as his predecessors had done:
It would be a mistake to regard Gates as merely a holdover from the Bush administration. Literally, of course, he is. But since coming to the Pentagon in December 2006, he has altered the dynamics of decision-making and, as a result, of policy.
Before Gates, the National Security Council was dysfunctional. Rumsfeld would skip meetings and refuse to let his deputies speak on his behalf. His tag-team partner, Vice President Dick Cheney, would block the NSC from forming a consensus on issues that concerned him; instead he would meet alone with President Bush afterward, a practice that compelled the secretary of state—Colin Powell in the first term, Condoleezza Rice in the second—to go around the process as well.
As with other Obama appointees so far, they have enough of an understanding of the process that they don't have to spend a year figuring out what needs doing.
