Path to Power
Danzig was born in New York City on Sept. 8, 1944, and graduated from Bronx High School.
He received his undergraduate degree from Reed College in Portland, Ore., then moved to England to study philosophy as a Rhodes scholar. He eventually earned his doctorate from Oxford University.
Danzig was drafted for the Vietnam War in 1968, but was rejected because he suffers from Crohn’s disease, a chronic intestinal problem.
He received his J.D. from Yale Law School in 1972. After graduation, he clerked for Supreme Court Justice Byron White.
Danzig taught contract law at Stanford and Harvard universities until 1977, when he was named deputy assistant secretary of defense by Carter Defense Secretary Harold Brown. In that position, he spearheaded an effort to improve the U.S. Armed Services’ ability to mobilize troops for deployment abroad.
He returned to law in 1981, this time as a partner at Latham & Watkins, a D.C. firm where he chaired the international practice group.
President Clinton appointed Danzig undersecretary of the Navy in 1993, in part because he played a key role in resolving the 1992 cheating scandal at the United State Naval Academy. In 1991, 134 members of the Naval Academy in Annapolis, Md., were accused of cheating on an electrical engineering exam. Twenty-two students were eventually expelled.
In 1998, Clinton appointed Danzig Navy secretary. In that position, he pushed for a stronger relationship between the Navy and Marine Corps, more up-to-date technology and better coordination between land and sea forces.
Danzig also lobbied to ensure that sailors and Marines were respected as skilled workers from their first days on duty. In one small gesture, he replaced sailors' foam bedding with new spring mattresses, a relatively cheap improvement that greatly improved quality of life.
"Why, when a new sailor graduates from his professional school, do we send him to a ship and say, 'Congratulations on your graduation, now you're going to chip paint or cook food'?" he told the Washington Post. "Imagine if I had somebody working at Microsoft and told him that he could work for me doing software programming but then said, 'Congratulations, welcome to Microsoft, for the first three months you'll cook.' It doesn't make a lot of sense in today's world."
His most controversial (and ultimately unsuccessful) fight was an effort to allow women to serve on nuclear-powered submarines in the Navy.
Danzig stepped down as Navy secretary in 2001, but has continued to serve as a consultant for the Defense Department on biological warfare. He is also a fellow at the Center for a New American Security and the Center for Strategic and International Studies, two well-respected foreign policy think tanks in the nation’s capital.
He also runs the Human Genome Sciences Corporation and the National Semiconductor Corporation.
On the 2008 presidential campaign, Danzig helped shape policy and develop daily talking points as one of Obama’s top national security advisers.
He was also a head cheerleader in selling relative newcomer, Obama, to some Democrats skeptical of the first-term Senator’s foreign policy credentials. At the Democratic National Convention, he met with dozens of foreign policy heavyweights in an effort to convince them that Obama had the judgment to lead.
Danzig is a member of the president's national security transition team and is being considered for a senior Defense Department post. Some news outlets even report that Obama has promised Danzig the job of Defense secretary once current secretary and Bush holdover Robert Gates steps down.
