He was against repealing "don't ask, don't tell", saying it would cost Marines lives on the battlefield. At the time the majority of Marines supported the repeal or didn't care. He also kicked a bunch of LTs out of TBS for cheating a land nav course which was seen as excessive by some.

His appointment from the beginning was kinda controversial too because he was an aviator. For those that don't know the commandant is traditionally from the infantry and the assistant commandant is from aviation. I heard that quite a few aviators feared there would never be another aviator commandant because of how unpopular he was.