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Arizona Republican Sen. John McCain criticized the Obama administration's decision to try to repeal the "don't ask, don't tell" policy that prevents gay service members from serving openly in the military, saying Sunday that "the system is working."

"The military is at its highest point in recruitment, in retention, in professionalism, in capability," McCain said on CNN's "State of the Union." "So to somehow allege that this policy has been damaging the military is simply false."

Instead, McCain called the attempt at repeal "a political promise made by an inexperienced president or candidate for president of the United States."

His comments come as two top American defense officials are scheduled to head to Capitol Hill this week to discuss a new Pentagon report gauging the effects of repealing the policy.

McCain, who serves as the ranking Republican member of the Senate Armed Services Committee was critical of the report.

"I want to know the effect on battle effectiveness and morale, not on how best to implement the change in policy," McCain told CNN Chief Political Correspondent Candy Crowley. "I don't think that's a lot to ask when we have our young men and women out there serving and fighting and tragically some of them dying."

The study will be released Tuesday ahead of the congressional hearings where the committee will hear testimony from Defense Secretary Robert Gates, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Michael Mullen and the men who led the Pentagon review, Pentagon general counsel Jeh Johnson and U.S. Army Gen. Carter Ham.

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I’m going to defer to our military commanders...at the end of the day, I’m going to rely on the commanders who will be impacted by a change in the law," and "the day that the leadership of the military comes to me and says, Senator, we ought to change the policy, then I think we ought to consider seriously changing it because those leaders in the military are the ones we give the responsibility to [sic]."

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It is my personal belief that allowing gays and lesbians to serve openly would be the right thing to do. No matter how I look at this issue, I cannot escape being troubled by the fact that we have in place a policy that forces young men and women to lie about who they are in order to defend their fellow citizens.

It does, again, go to a fundamental principle with me, which is, everybody counts. And part of the struggle back to the institutional integrity aspect of this and putting individuals in a position that every single day, they wonder whether today is going to be the day, and devaluing them in that regard just is inconsistent with us as an institution. I have served with homosexuals since 1968. Sen. McCain spoke to that in his statement. Everybody in the military has. And we understand that. So it is a number of things which cumulatively, for me personally, get me to this position.

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I instructed the working group to obtain the input of Servicemembers so that the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and I, as well as the Service Chiefs, can more fully understand how a change in the DADT policy may impact unit cohesion, military readiness and effectiveness, recruiting and retention and family readiness. [...]

The Chairman and I fully support the approach and the efforts of the working group, as do the Service Chiefs. We are confident that the working group’s report will provide us with the information we need to appropriately advise the President, and, if requested to do so, to provide our fully informed views to Congress as it considers legislative action.

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“And so your statement is one that is clearly biased, without the view of Congress being taken into consideration,” McCain said. “I’m happy to say we still have a Congress of the United States that would have to pass a law to repeal ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’, despite your efforts to repeal it in many respects by fiat.

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So Admiral Mullen said, speaking for himself only, he thought it ought to be reversed and of course Secretary Gates said that. I do not. I do not know what the other military leadership wants. I will be glad to listen to the views of military leaders. I always have. But I’m not changing my position in support of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell unless there is the significant support for the repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.

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Recently, Army Secretary John McHugh said that “The Army has a big history of taking on similar issues [with]…predictions of doom and gloom that did not play out.” His conclusion echoes substantial scholarly and official military research which finds that allowing gays and lesbians to serve openly would not jeopardize readiness.

Studies have shown that three-quarters of service members say they are personally comfortable around gays and lesbians. Two-thirds say they already know or suspect gay people in their units. This raises important questions about the assertion that openly gay service would impair the military. In fact, it shows that gays and lesbians in the military have already been accepted by the average soldier.

In 2008, a bi-partisan panel of retired General and Flag officers carefully reviewed this matter for a year and concluded that repeal would not pose a risk to the military's high standards of morale, discipline, cohesion, recruitment, or retention. Interestingly, an increasing number of active-duty officers who have reviewed “don’t ask, don’t tell” indicate that the policy, not the presence of gays, is detrimental to the armed forces’ need for skilled personnel who are able to serve without compromising their integrity and, by extension, that of the armed forces as a whole.

As a nation built on the principle of equality, we should recognize and welcome change that will build a stronger more cohesive military. It is time to repeal “don’t ask, don’t tell” and allow our military leaders to create policy that holds our service members to a single standard of conduct and discipline.

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The document totals about 370 pages and is divided into two sections. The first section explores whether repealing “don’t ask, don’t tell” would harm unit readiness or morale. It cites the findings of a survey sent over the summer to 400,000 active-duty and reserve troops, a separate questionnaire sent to about 150,000 military spouses, the responses submitted to an anonymous online dropbox seeking comments, and responses from focus-group participants.

More than 70 percent of respondents to a survey sent to active-duty and reserve troops over the summer said the effect of repealing the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy would be positive, mixed or nonexistent, said two sources familiar with the document. The majority — the number one answer, first answer was ‘I don’t care.’ Most common, number one. Number two was, ‘I would deal directly with the person involved.’ A key thing this study kept coming back to is that it’s very important about the chain of command. What commanders say. How far commanders act. What tone they set. The marines were the most negative out of the services. They had the most people who were — with negative responses. And the marine corps leadership has taken a stance and has been very vocally against this issue. And the study found that most soldiers and sailors and all different service members follow a chain of command. So if the chain of command accepts this as the law, the data is that so will the soldiers.

The study, described as the ‘core’ of the Pentagon’s review, is particularly significant since moderate Republicans have pledged to listen to the troops before voting to repeal the policy.

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not how to implement a repeal, but the effects on morale and battle effectiveness. That’s what I want. And once we get this study, we need to have hearings, and we need to examine it, and we need to look at whether it’s the kind of study that we wanted. It isn’t, in my view, because I wanted a study to determine the effects of the repeal on battle effectiveness and morale. What this study is, is designed to do is, is to find out how the repeal could be implemented. Those are two very different aspects of this issue.

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If you step away from the Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell there are lots of things that go on today in the American military that the average Marine out there might not agree with. But the one thing we have in the Marine Corp is we got discipline and we got leadership and those are the two things that are I think the one thing that’s going to carry they day for us should the law get changed. But there has never been a gag order, and I don’t anticipate one being put on the Marines. …I don’t see that that would be an issue….

Amos also countered Sen. John McCain’s (R-AZ) argument that the Pentagon’s study won’t tell military leaders if repeal would undermine military effectiveness, insisting that “If this policy is changed. The last thing you’re going to see your Marine Corps do is try to step in and push it aside. That will simply not be the case,” Amos said. “There will be issues, we’re going to work through them.”

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A Pentagon study on gays in the military has determined that overturning the law known as "don't ask, don't tell" might cause some disruption at first but would not create any widespread or long-lasting problems.

The study was expected to provide some much-needed ammunition to congressional Democrats struggling to overturn the law. But despite supporters' hopes to force a vote during the lame-duck legislative session, it remains unclear whether the findings would be enough to sway skeptical Republicans, led by Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz.

Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Adm. Mike Mullen were expected to discuss the report later Tuesday, with the study's co-chairs, Pentagon General Counsel Jeh Johnson and Army Gen. Carter Ham.

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McCain compared his former running mate, Sarah Palin, to former President Ronald Reagan, noting that some viewed Reagan as divisive too. "I think that anybody who has the visibility that Sarah has is obviously going to have some divisiveness," McCain said. "I remember that a guy named Ronald Reagan used to be viewed by some as divisive. ... I think she had a positive impact on the last election, and I'm proud of her."

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Technically He's Not Wrong, point out Aaron Blake and Felicia Sonmez at The Washington Post. Reagan was certainly "divisive," the authors write: "There was a segment of the population, about one-third, that was dead-set against him... even after he was shot in 1981 and the economy improved in 1986." And there's a similar faction of hard-core Palin opponents. Blake and Sonmez note that "where Reagan differs from Palin, though, is the so-called 'Reagan Democrats.' Even in his darkest days, about 20 percent of Democrats supported the former president. Palin hasn't gotten anywhere close to that; there are basically no Palin Democrats. And given the passions she evokes, it's hard to see how such a group would form."

But He's Wrong in Every Other Way Doug Mataconis of Outside the Beltway can't believe his ears. "Ronald Reagan was a man of strongly held ideas. Sarah Palin repeats sound bites she writes on her hand. Ronald Reagan served the state of California for two full terms. Sarah Palin quit the job she was elected to in order to pursue a more lucrative career as 'author' and Fox News talking head. I grew up on the Reagan Presidency, Ronald Reagan remains a political hero of mine. Senator, Sarah Palin is no Ronald Reagan."

McCain's Just Trying to Cover Himself "John McCain's political legacy is tied to Sarah Palin," writes Jason Easley at Politicususa. "If she were to get elected president, it would validate his 2008 choice to put her on the ticket, and remove what looks to be a permanent stain from his legacy. McCain is desperately hoping that he isn't remembered for unleashing a mentally ill, crack pot, Alaska hillbilly onto the national political scene." Easley adds that "Ronald Reagan whether one loves or loathes him, was qualified to be president. Sarah Palin is not ... Those who believe that Sarah Palin is the next Ronald Reagan are completely delusional."

He Didn't REALLY Compare Palin to Reagan While most headlines about this story have played up the sound bite, Elise Viebeck at The Hill goes a different route, pointing out that McCain "stopped short" and "retreated a bit" from drawing a full equivalence between the two politicians. Viebeck is right: When Crowley asks McCain, "Do you see her as a parallel [to Reagan]?" his response is a feint: "I think she's doing a great job. I think she has motivated our base, I think she had a positive impact on the last election, and I'm proud of her."

Anyway, the Idea Doesn't Hold Much Water Steve Kornacki at Salon rolls out a detailed post explaining all the ways in which the political landscape has changed between 1980 and now. Kornacki says that Palin is "not the clear front-runner that Reagan was... Her name never appeared on a single primary ballot; whether all -- or most -- of her admirers are willing to vote for her for president remains to be seen." He also notes that unlike when Reagan was campaigning for president, "there is plainly room for a non-Palin candidate -- even if it's a candidate who's not currently registering in the polls -- to claim the party base's loyalty for '12."

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Overall opposition throughout the military was about 30 percent -- roughly the same as it is in America as a whole, according to recent findings from CNN/Opinion Research Corp. and the Pew Forum.

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The Pentagon believes that the study is "the largest, most comprehensive review of a personnel policy matter which the Department of Defense has ever undertaken," a defense official close to the process said.

More than nine out of 10 troops said their unit's ability to work with someone they thought was gay or lesbian was very good, good, or neither good nor bad.

The authors of the report say gay and lesbian troops would continue to be discreet about their personal lives, even with a repeal, based on observations of workplaces in civilian society.

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Troops would not be asked to change their beliefs, and their the views should not be downplayed, the authors said in their remarks to Congress, even as they pointed out that troops already work and fight alongside people with other faiths and beliefs.

The authors outlined a number of recommendations for effectively handling the repeal, including leaders making clear what is expected of troops in the field.

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The authors will also recommend that those previously removed from the military under "don't ask, don't tell" be allowed to reapply under the same criteria as anyone else seeking to rejoin the military.

Even with a repeal, not all benefits will be available to gay service members and their partners because of the Defense of Marriage Act.

The recommendations are based on surveys, focus groups and face-to-face meetings at bases around the world and even a carefully controlled effort to communicate anonymously with homosexuals serving in the military.

The Pentagon sent surveys to 400,000 troops and got about 115,000 responses. It sent separate questionnaires to 150,000 military spouses and got 44,000 back.

The Defense Department also set up a website for service members who wanted to comment. That effort elicited 72,000 responses.

And the Pentagon held meetings at 51 U.S. military bases around the world where 24,000 more troops discussed the issue.

Officials preparing the report also went to the service academies to hear from staff, faculty and students.

Key senators fired the warning shots for what could be a bitter debate in the chamber as the week began.

"The system is working," Sen. John McCain, R-Arizona, said on CNN's "State of the Union" on Sunday. "The military is at its highest point in recruitment, in retention, in professionalism, in capability. So to somehow allege that this policy has been damaging the military is simply false."

Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Missouri, shot back on "Fox News Sunday," saying that "gay members of the military have served for decades, and there hasn't been a problem with our military being the finest in the world. ... We should move forward to make sure that any person who stands up and says, 'I'm willing to die for our country' can do so with honor."

On Thursday, the committee heard from Gates and Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. On Friday, it will hear from the top brass of the Army, Navy, Air Force and Marines.

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Outside the military, Americans are overwhelmingly in favor of repealing the Clinton-era law.

A Pew survey released Monday indicated that a majority of Americans say they favor allowing gays and lesbians to serve openly in the armed forces.

According to the poll, 58 percent of the public approves of allowing homosexuals to serve openly, with 27 percent saying they are opposed.

A CNN/Opinion Research Corp. poll conducted earlier in November indicated that more than seven in 10 Americans said that people who are openly gay or lesbian should be allowed to serve in the military, with 23 percent opposed.

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