Tulsi Gabbard is headed to become the nation’s spy master.

According to the federal reports from the office of the director of national intelligence, the aggregate budget requested this year for the national intelligence program is $73.4 billion.

Running America’s spy business is no small deal.

Gabbard, however, has no deep intelligence background. She is a lieutenant colonel serving in the United States Army Civil Affairs and Psychological Operations Command United States Army Reserve.

Never mind. For Gabbard, it shows her improbable history of political success that comes from growing up in a decidedly political family that at various times had both Gabbard’s father Mike and mother Carol also holding public office with a large, conservative public profile.

While Gabbard and family have lived a life in politics, there was no indication that she would eventually be considered for one of the most decisive federal policy positions.

Now President-elect Donald Trump has named Gabbard to be national intelligence director, overseeing 18 spy agencies.

If her nomination goes through, Gabbard, 43, would run the Central Intelligence Agency and other federal agencies. She would serve as the principal adviser to the president, the National Security Council and the Homeland Security Council for intelligence matters, according to the responsibilities listed for national intelligence director.

According to a New York Times report, Gabbard and her office would be responsible for preparing the president’s daily brief, a written intelligence summary assembled each morning.

The new duties would come as quite a jump for someone who at age 21 was the youngest person ever elected to the Hawaii Legislature, and was at the time the youngest woman ever elected to a U.S. state legislature.

Gabbard was born in American Samoa in 1981. Her father, Mike Gabbard, started in public life protesting gay marriage to such an extent that angry demonstrations halted his natural food store business.

Tulsi Gabbard is an Iraq War veteran and lieutenant colonel in the Army Reserve, has military experience but no indication of a deep background in intelligence.

What Gabbard has always had in politics is flash.

In a 2013 Vogue magazine article, U.S. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, who picked Gabbard to speak at the Democratic National Convention, labeled Gabbard “an emerging star.”

Now Pelosi is out as speaker of the U.S. House, and former Democrat Gabbard is a Republican lightning rod, a focus of Donald Trump’s conservative emerging presidency.

The question not answered is how good is Gabbard’s game.

Voters in Hawaii know Gabbard as a politician with an acutely tuned sense of how to extract as much attention as possible. In addition to being a former Hawaii state House member, she was a former Honolulu City Council member and a former member of the U.S. House of Representatives. All good, but not awesome.

As a Hawaii National Guard member, Gabbard served with a “Charlie Med” unit at the Anaconda Logistical Support Area in Baghdad and earned the Combat Medical Badge. She graduated from officer candidate school, volunteered for a second Middle East deployment in 2008 and served in Kuwait until 2009.

But it was politics that lit up Gabbard.

If confirmed, Gabbard is now in a position to be one of Trump’s most important nominations. It will not be “Tulsi, who?”; it will be “Gabbard’s orders.”

Richard Borreca writes on politics on Sundays. Reach him at 808onpolitics@gmail.com.