Month: November 2012

Failing up and getting paid well to do it

by digby

Incentives:

Citigroup said Friday that the former CEO, who resigned last month in a management shakeup, will receive an “incentive award” of $6.7 million for his work at the bank this year. Former president and chief operating officer John Havens, who stepped down along with Pandit, is getting $6.8 million, according to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

The two men will also continue collecting deferred cash and stock compensation from last year, awards valued at $8.8 million for Pandit and $8.7 million for Havens.
The company suffered a profit loss of 88 percent during the third quarter, when Pandit supposedly earned his “incentive award.” During his time at Citi, Pandit made some $260 million in total compensation, even accounting for the year he took a $1 salary during the financial crisis.

But hey, I’m sure he’ll be denied a loophole or two and some sort of deduction so it’s not as if he won’t be sharing in the sacrifice. It’s not as if this obscene practice is going unchecked.

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Calling their bluff on secession

by David Atkins

The drearily predictable calls for secession in the wake of the re-election of the first African-American president have already begun:

In the aftermath of last week’s presidential election, residents in at least nineteen states have put up petitions on the government’s “We the People” petitioning website seeking the right to secede from the rest of the country.

While the petitions themselves may not be significant, the reaction could be.

Petitions for secession filed from Louisiana and Texas have already received well over 10,000 signatures. Per the website’s own rules, petitions that garner 25,000 signatures or more within 30 days require a response from the Obama administration.

Here’s the thing about that:

Red states, by and large, are moochers. They can’t sustain themselves. If California were to secede, the state would have a balanced budget (or nearly balanced.) If Alabama were to secede, it wouldn’t be able to pay for its stop signs.

Now, the standard and safe response to calls for secession from the Right is to toe the President’s line that we are one people and one nation, not two Americas but a United States of America. That’s a great line. But it’s not really true. It’s not true culturally or even geographically. The same free-state vs slave-state divide that has existed since the founding of this nation is still more or less with us today, in almost the same geographic locations.

This isn’t to say that secession is justified or remotely desirable. It isn’t. A lot of good people would be badly hurt in red states by a Red State secession. We can’t and shouldn’t leave them behind.

But at a certain point, as long as these dependent Republican fools are declaring themselves John Galt producers, fantasizing themselves “makers” in a country of takers, it may be important for progressives to simply call their bluff and dare them to secede. They won’t do it, and we wouldn’t allow it when all is said and done.

But like a good parent with a rebellious teenager who thinks they know it all, sometimes the best course is to say, “Fine. Then leave. Good luck paying your bills!” That sort of response might at least give them pause to consider their actual fiscal realities.

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From God himself

by digby

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And one of these days we’ll find those WMDs too …


by digby

In case you were wondering how the villagers are seeing the “Grand Bargain”, here’s a good example:

ZAKARIA: And we are back with Ken Duberstein, John Podesta and David Gergen, all White House hands, all of whom have served in second terms.

John Podesta, what does President Obama do to ensure that the United States does not fall off the fiscal cliff? You’ve already seen there is much debate about this.

And many people on the left, Paul Krugman in the New York Times, are saying do not make a deal just for the sake of making a deal. Hold out and call the Republicans’ bluff.

PODESTA: Well, I think that this election set this up as one in which the president one on the basic argument that taxes needed to go up, particularly for the wealthiest Americans, they need to pay a little bit more to try to solve the deficit problem. And I think he’s got to stick with that. The one thing he was clear about was that he wasn’t going to sign a bill that extended high-end tax rates from the Bush era.

Now, he’s going to have to negotiate with the Republicans. If they have ideas on how to raise taxes from that group, I’m sure he’s willing to listen to them.

But I think, right now, he can’t — he’s got to be successful in creating this fiscal framework that gives him the revenue he needs to make the investment that he wants for the things like education, infrastructure, science and tech that he talked about to the American people.

So he’s going to have to, I think, be tough, but prepared to compromise and he’s going to have to be clear to the American people what his priorities are.

ZAKARIA: David Gergen, people — you know the Republicans already keep saying that there’s no mandate here, but my reading is close to John Podesta’s which is the president did talk about the need for investment, about the need for education, science, research, infrastructure and he talked about how to pay for it.

Will that translate into leverage on Capitol Hill?

GERGEN: Some, but not a lot and I think that — you know the truth is the president clearly campaigned on raising taxes on the wealthy. He obviously campaigned about protecting education and infrastructure. And he ought to be tough on that as John says.

But I think the big question is how do you — how do we avoid the cliff? I think we can. I’m optimistic we can. I think people in Washington often are dumb, but they’re not crazy and they’re simply not going to take us into another recession I think.

But the danger is this; the president has to decide, look, do I want a grand bargain or do I want to isolate and fight it out over this tax increase on the wealthy.

I think if we get hung up on that issue, there is a higher chance we’re going to go over the cliff. The issue ought to be how do we get revenue that’s going to help settle this grand bargain?

And if the Republicans — if you can get Republicans to agree to a framework that really will seriously increase revenue and increase the tax burden on the wealthy, the president’s got to keep on that. But do it within the framework that also agrees to some sort of sense of entitlement reform and put that into next year.

I think that’s a much more productive way than if we isolate on this question of whether we’re going to raise questions on the elite, both sides are now dug in and we could easily go over the cliff.

I think it ought to be wrapped into the bigger discussion of how do you get revenue. 

ZAKARIA: Ken, so far, what I’ve been struck by is the Republicans have been remarkably flexible on the issue of immigration. Even Sean Hannity now says he has — his position, in that wonderful Washington word, has evolved.

And he — but no such evolution on the issues of taxes. Both Boehner and Mitch McConnell said tax rates simply will not go up period.

DUBERSTEIN: Yes, but I think you’re missing the second part of the sentence which is that they are willing to consider new revenue. There are lots of ways, in that old expression, to skin a cat.

And I thought John Boehner the other day was quite emphatic in saying we are open to new revenues under the right framework.

Dave Gergen is absolutely correct. I think this is a two-step deal. I think it is too ambitious with too little time to get to the grand bargain in the so-called lame duck session of the Congress.

But I think that you can scrape together enough to avoid sequestration and avoid the fiscal cliff or fiscal slope. Remember, they have to come up with only about $100 billion. I know that sounds weird, but $100 billion, to get — to set that aside.

Between spending cuts and perhaps some loophole closes, I think they can raise it. But you can’t confuse that with the long-term deal.

ZAKARIA: John Podesta, does the math work though, which is if you close deductions for the wealthy people, can you raise enough revenue? I think that’s the fundamental question.

PODESTA: Well, I think, you know this became a really contentious issue in the campaign. I think the only way to do that and to raise enough revenue is to actually take a big bite out of the middle class. That was the import of the Tax Policy Center’s analysis of the Romney tax plan.

Fascinating Villager gobbledygook, don’t you think?

But this just slayed me:

ZAKARIA: And I think what the Republicans would argue, David, is that the big problem is tax hikes are here to stay and spending cuts tend to fritter away. You know the spending restraint is maintained for a year or two. 

GERGEN: Exactly.

Right. Because if there’s one thing the congress really hates to do it’s cut taxes, particularly for the top earners:

And lord knows it’s dead easy to raise money for needed social programs. Just ask the team who negotiated Obamacare. At lest Gergen has some sense that it goes both ways (although it doesn’t…)

ZAKARIA: Is there a way to do a deal where you put in place super majority or (inaudible)? That is to say, you know, if you now want to go outside of this framework and raise spending again, you need 66 percent votes. 

Something like that so that Republicans are assured that you don’t have a two-tier system where the tax hikes are permanent, but the spending cuts are a one-year deal.

GERGEN: That would be a very smart way to go. I think you have to put some protections in there for both sides, frankly. And that has a lot of merit to it.

I come back to this notion about whether the — I think it’s perfectly fair for the president to say we need more revenue and, within that context, you know, I promised the American people the burdens would go — the wealthy would have to pay more.

But you can do that within the framework of Simpson-Bowles. Simpson-Bowles didn’t ask for tax increases or increases in the rates. What it asked for was to go through tax reform and lower the rates in fact.

So, there you have it.  Back to the magical, pain free solution (for people with money)  known as “tax reform.”

This is why, my friends, we can’t have a nice country. Our top opinion leaders are caught in a feedback loop of misinformation, delusion and self-interest. We just had an election and nobody voted for the president because they wanted to cut vital programs. But that’s what everyone says has to happen right now in a lame duck session because congress and the White House over two administrations passed some laws and made some agreements that are all expiring and they are treating those expiration dates as if they were handed down by Moses and can only be fixed if we slash debt immediately. That’s nonsense from beginning to end.

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They always sound chastened. But are they?

by digby

Peggy Noonan went on TV this week-end and said what a lot of Republicans are saying:

“One of the things I think the party will have to do now is listen to certain voices, such as up here in New York, Heather Higgins of IWF (Independent Women’s Forum). She has been some time to party political professionals the answer is not to drill deep into the base; the answer is to expand the base. And that is through going to people, that is through conversation, that is through talking to them about the issues that they care about. It is not operating from ‘up here’ with big ads that just press people’s buttons; it’s operating in a way like the Obama campaign did. It’s going down on to the ground and talking to people. It’s labor intensive, but it’s a way of growing. It’s a wake of persuading people, which I think Republicans have gotten kind of bad at,” she said.

I can’t help but be a little bit amused by all this. Recall that in 2009, Noonan was similarly upset at Sarah Palin and the angry attitudes of the right wing. She was very taken by Obama’s inaugural speech:

It was a moderate speech both in tone and content, a serious and solid speech. The young Democrat often used language with which traditional Republicans would be thoroughly at home: The American story has never been one of “shortcuts or settling for less,” the journey “has not been . . . for the fainthearted—for those who prefer leisure over work, or seek only the pleasure of riches and fame. Rather, it has been the risk-takers, the doers, the makers of things” who have created the best of our enduring history…

This was not the sound of candidate Barack Obama but President Obama, not the sound of the man who appealed to the left wing of his party but one attempting to appeal to the center of the nation. It was not a joyous, audacious document, not a call to arms, but a reasoned statement by a Young Sobersides.

The right wing was very chastened in the wake of Bush and McCain and said they were looking for ways to moderate and work with the new president.

Then this happened:

[ FEB 28 2009 ]

(CNN) – Rush Limbaugh brought a cheering crowd to its feet several times Saturday in Washington as he called on fellow conservatives to take back the country in the keynote speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference.

“We conservatives have not done a good enough job of just laying out basically who we are because we make the mistake of assuming that people know. What they know is largely incorrect, based on the way we’re portrayed in pop culture, in the drive-by media, by the Democrat party,” the conservative talk show host told a mostly-young crowd of energized supporters.

Limbaugh’s impassioned remarks, punctuated by chest-thumping, fist-pumping and chants of “USA” from the crowd, capped off three days of talk at CPAC focusing on rebuilding the Republican Party.

“He played to his crowd here,” CNN Political Editor Mark Preston said. “And this crowd is now energized, something we haven’t seen from Republicans, certainly not conservatives, since the November election.”

Limbaugh used his self-described “first national address,” which ran more than hour longer than his allotted 20 minutes, to criticize President Barack Obama for inspiring fear in Americans in order to push a liberal agenda of “big government.”

“He wants people in fear, angst and crisis, fearing the worst each and every day because that clears the decks for President Obama and his pals to come in with the answers which are abject failures, historically shown and demonstrated. Doesn’t matter. They’ll have control of it when it’s all over. And that’s what they want,” Limbaugh said.

“They see these inequalities, these inequities that capitalism produces. How do they try to fix it? Do they try to elevate those at the bottom? No, they try to tear down the people at the top. “

Limbaugh also dismissed the notion of bipartianship as a “false premise” given the diverging views of the Democrat and Republican parties on a variety issues, among them, the recent $787 stimulus package signed by Obama.

“Bipartisanship occurs only after one other result. And that is victory,” he said.

“What they mean is we check our core principles at the door, come in, let them run the show, and then agree with them,” he said.

You’ll recall that all the Villagers gasped at the audacity. But that broke the spell.

Will it happen again? Who knows? But I wouldn’t count on Noonan’s “kinder, gentler” Republican attitude to hold any more than it did the first time.

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The so-called trial balloon in black and white


by digby

Bob Woodward said yesterday that he’d received the private negotiating documents outlining what the White House was prepared to agree to in the 2011 budget showdown. Here’s what he said:

“This is a confidential document, last offer the president — the White House made last year to Speaker Boehner to try to reach this $4 trillion grand bargain. And it’s long and it’s tedious and it’s got budget jargon in it. But what it shows is a willingness to cut all kinds of things, like TRICARE, which is the sacred health insurance program for the military, for military retirees; to cut Social Security; to cut Medicare. And there are some lines in there about, “We want to get tax rates down, not only for individuals but for businesses.” So Obama and the White House were willing to go quite far.”

You can see the documents here:

I was assured by insiders and professionals over the past year that I was wrong to believe that the White House had ever put SS and other vital programs on the chopping block. I was told that this was merely a trial balloon which was immediately shot down. It didn’t look that way to me at the time, the reporting didn’t indicate that and doesn’t look that way to me now. This was a real offer.

The question now is whether or not the Democrats are willing to go that far again in order to avoid the “fiscal cliff” (assuming that we get the holy grail of millionaire tip money, which looks likely) or whether they will pull some of this back. One can certainly see Republicans shrieking like banshees that they made the supreme, ultimate sacrifice of asking the rich to pay a teensy bit more in taxes and now the Democrats won’t “meet them halfway.” But you never know. Let’s just say this doesn’t make it any easier.

Incidentally, in case you are wondering what the “Superlative CPI” is, it’s another word for the Chained CPI, which Social Security expert Eric Kingston explains here:

(T)he chained CPI or also called the superlative CPI that’s being proposed by some members of the “super committee” and has been discussed in the deficit reduction discussions, that alternative simply does not pass the smell test. It would only make a situation we have today worse. We are not adequately in my opinion and in the opinion of others adjusting for inflation. Today the chained CPI, if it’s implemented, will further reduce benefits. A woman who retires at age 65 living ’til age 75 will get a benefit of about $600 less in real dollars 10 years later at age 85, about $950 or so less at age 95 – if she lives so long – it would be roughly $1,400 less than it would have been if the chained CPI is put into effect.

“The consumer price index for the elderly which the Older Americans Act asked to be developed by the Bureau of Statistics. CPI-E for Americans over 62 is a far superior measure of inflation, but it too is less than perfect but it’s certainly better than what we have in play today.

“In terms of the impact of inflation on older households and on persons with disabilities, the public would be very well served if initially the CPI-E were to put into effect and if Congress requested further development and testing of price indices.

“We all have an interest in an accurate CPI. Democrats and Republicans all have an interest in that. The problem I think we have today is we do not have an accurate CPI. I think if we get a more accurate CPI, it would in fact not increase but adjust benefits. We don’t want a national policy that says the longer you live the less purchasing power your Social Security has. That’s what we will have if we implement the chained CPI. It is also arguably what we still have today because the current CPI does not fully adjust for it.

“The implications, by the way, of the chained CPI on the SSI program are even more deleterious, because it would both cut benefits in the beginning – before people get benefits – and it will also be cutting their benefits after that. Whether implemented in 2011 or 2021, the chained CPI will violate promises that Congress and the president have made that there would be no changes to Social Security benefits affecting people 55 and over. It’s bad policy, and it’s also terrible public relations.

According to that document, the White House proposed to implement the chained CPI starting in 2015, although they said they’d cushion the blow for the poorest among the beneficiaries so that’s nice.

Oh, and they agreed to “alter” the medicare eligibility age. I have to assume they didn’t mean to lower it.

Now perhaps they can get the Republicans to kick in a little bit more millionaire chump change this time so the cuts to vital programs aren’t so drastic. But if this offer is still on the table — which it was as recently as last spring — I think we have the baseline from which they are all working from.

I can certainly see why, with the election over, Republicans like Bill Kristol are saying to take the deal. It’s a great deal for them.  I always figured they’d pull that trigger eventually. They aren’t that stupid.

More GOTV won’t help the GOP, Part II

by David Atkins

I mentioned earlier that despite the insistence of many conservatives that the problem isn’t their message but rather the lack of a voter turnout operation to match that of the Democrats, it just isn’t true:

Because, simply put, there are many more progressive voters in this country than conservative ones, and conservative voters are much more reliable. If we could guarantee 100% turnout, Republicans would never win another national election.

As effective as the Obama ground game was, Democrats still have a great deal of room to grow our vote among the young and the economically disadvantaged who traditionally vote much less frequently. Republican voters are a smaller (and shrinking) share of the electorate and effectively turn themselves out to vote. Also, as Digby has noted here in the past, most of the conservative “cusp” voters are social conservatives whom the evangelical and hardcore Catholic churches are already working hard to turn out. Ralph Reed didn’t just go away.

Then there’s the fact that money just isn’t as good at buying a ground game as it is at buying TV. A good ground game is much less effective if the people working the ground don’t really believe in the cause. Paid precinct walkers are notoriously unreliable and constantly fake data if their hearts and souls aren’t in the game.

Despite some high-profile failures, we’re starting to learn just how significant the real Republican voter turnout operation was:

And yet, in the end, evangelicals voted overwhelmingly for Mr. Romney — even matching the presidential vote of Mormons: 78 percent for Mr. Romney and 21 percent for Mr. Obama, according to exit polls by Edison Research.

“We did our job,” said Mr. Reed, who helped pioneer religious voter mobilization with the Christian Coalition in the 1980s and ’90s, and is now founder and chairman of the Faith and Freedom Coalition. He said that his organization outdid itself this year, putting out 30 million voter guides in 117,000 churches, 24 million mailings to voters in battleground states and 26 million phone calls.

“Those voters turned out, and they voted overwhelmingly against Obama,” Mr. Reed said. “But you can’t be driving in the front of the boat and leaking in the back of the boat, and win the election.

“You can’t just overperform among voters of faith,” he continued. “There’s got to be a strategy for younger voters, unmarried voters, women voters — especially single women — and minorities.”

Much as Republicans might fantasize, better GOTV won’t fix this problem. They don’t have a tactical problem. They have a values problem. A majority of the American public simply doesn’t want what they’re selling.

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“It is best not to straddle ideals”

by digby

I have had the great pleasure to screen a couple of episodes of Oliver Stone and historian Peter Kuznik’s new series for Showtime called The Untold History of the United States. I’ll have more to say about it later on, but I did want to highlight this one bit that Michael Moore posted on his site today.

In 1940, as most of the world was fighting and the US was still struggling to come out of the depression, Roosevelt was heading for an unprecedented third term. He wanted to dump his conservadem VP John Nance Garner because of his hostility to the New Deal and nominate his Secretary of Agriculture, the liberal Henry Wallace. The conservadems tried to block Wallace at the convention and an exasperated Roosevelt wrote a letter to be read to the gathered delegates. This is that letter:

Franklin D. Roosevelt Letter to the Democratic Convention

July 18, 1940

Members of the Convention:

In the century in which we live, the Democratic Party has received the support of the electorate only when the party, with absolute clarity, has been the champion of progressive and liberal policies and principles of government.

The party has failed consistently when through political trading and chicanery it has fallen into the control of those interests, personal and financial, which think in terms of dollars instead of in terms of human values.

The Republican Party has made its nominations this year at the dictation of those who, we all know, always place money ahead of human progress.

The Democratic Convention, as appears clear from the events of today, is divided on this fundamental issue. Until the Democratic Party through this convention makes overwhelmingly clear its stand in favor of social progress and liberalism, and shakes off all the shackles of control fastened upon it by the forces of conservatism, reaction, and appeasement, it will not continue its march of victory.

It is without question that certain political influences pledged to reaction in domestic affairs and to appeasement in foreign affairs have been busily engaged behind the scenes in the promotion of discord since this Convention convened.

Under these circumstances, I cannot, in all honor, and will not, merely for political expediency, go along with the cheap bargaining and political maneuvering which have brought about party dissension in this convention.

It is best not to straddle ideals.

In these days of danger when democracy must be more than vigilant, there can be no connivance with the kind of politics which has internally weakened nations abroad before the enemy has struck from without.

It is best for America to have the fight out here and now.

I wish to give the Democratic Party the opportunity to make its historic decision clearly and without equivocation. The party must go wholly one way or wholly the other. It cannot face in both directions at the same time.

By declining the honor of the nomination for the presidency, I can restore that opportunity to the convention. I so do.

Plus ca change, yada yada yada, eh?

By the way, he didn’t have to deliver it because Eleanor managed the floor for Wallace and he made it on the ticket. What happened to him in 1944 and beyond is another, thoroughly depressing, story that is covered in depth in the Showtime series.

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QOTD: Bill Kristol

by digby

Ready to deal:

Conservative commentator and Weekly Standard editor Bill Kristol said Sunday the Republican Party should accept new ideas, including the much-criticized suggestion by Democrats that taxes be allowed to go up on the wealthy.

“It won’t kill the country if we raise taxes a little bit on millionaires,” he said on “Fox News Sunday.” “It really won’t, I don’t think. I don’t really understand why Republicans don’t take Obama’s offer.”

“Really? The Republican Party is going to fall on its sword to defend a bunch of millionaires, half of whom voted Democratic and half of whom live in Hollywood and are hostile?” he asked.

He’s not the first one to say this, of course. David Koch came out for higher taxes on millionaires in exchange for deep cuts to every federal department, so that’s good. And Lindsay Graham was on board months ago:

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) on Tuesday urged Mitt Romney to embrace revenues as part of a plan to stave off the automatic spending cuts set to take effect next year.

“If he gave his blessing, it would be easier for Republicans,” Graham said of the presumptive GOP presidential nominee.

In a discussion with reporters, Graham said his Republican colleagues are torn over whether to agree to consider revenues – such as tax loopholes and fees for government services – as part of a deal to avert the spending cuts, called sequestration.

I’m hearing top Democrat Chris Van Hollen right now on Fox promise major entitlement reform, which the Republican all agreed was terrific although they disagreed on the details. Republican Bob Corker said he was relieved that Democrats are finally ready to make the necessary cuts for the long term.

I still hold with what I wrote before:

Huck [Graham] is one of those angling to keep most of the defense cuts off the table. So, he’s out there lobbying his brethren to “close loopholes” and raise “fees” for government services instead. And what about the cuts? Well, it goes without saying that they are written in stone.

There was a time when I would have assumed that this was baked in the cake. It’s the smart move, after all. The Republicans agree to “sacrifice” by backing some meaningless “revenue”, both sides protect their defense contractors and they get to cut a bunch of necessary and important services for average people and pretend like it hurts them more than it hurts us. It’s a beautiful austerity package all dressed up as a “balanced approach.” Why in the world wouldn’t the Republicans eagerly take this deal?

Well, we’ve seen that they are just that obstinate. When offered a Grand Bargain to slash the hell out of everything for very little in return they walked away before so there’s no reason to think they won’t do it again. And perhaps that means they are a little bit smarter than we realize. Having walked away before, the Democrats have no illusions that the GOP will lose their nerve. So, if everyone agrees that the end of the world is nigh if they don’t reach agreement, the Republicans are in a good position to extract every last concession for very little in return.

And since the Democrats have made it clear that the only hill they will die on is the “revenue” hill, the Republicans can probably get away with offering up Huckleberry’s fake “sacrifice” and the Dems will sell it as a win. If the lame duck goes the way it has in the past, we’ll probably see some unemployment insurance and maybe a payroll tax cut thrown in to trap the liberals. ( Who knows? Maybe they’ll throw in some promise to repeal DOMA?) Just keep in mind that the price for those things is likely to be further degradation of the safety net and an immediate contraction of federal dollars at the worst possible time.

So, I don’t care about this chump change he’s talking about and neither should the Democrats. Raising some tip money and promising to close a loophole that will open up the next day somewhere else is not a win. If they do this thing I surely hope they don’t insult us and ask us to clap louder this time. I might have to hurt somebody.

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Escaping the cult

by digby

Spencer Ackerman has written a fascinating piece about how a reporter, himself, got drawn into the vortex of David Petraeus’ charisma:

The uncomfortable truth is that a lot of us who’ve covered Petraeus over the years could have written that. It’s embarrassingly close to my piece on Petraeus’ legacy that @bitteranagram tweeted. And that’s not something you should fault Petraeus for. It’s something you should fault reporters like me for. Another irony that Petraeus’ downfall reveals is that some of us who egotistically thought our coverage of Petraeus and counterinsurgency was so sophisticated were perpetuating myths without fully realizing it.

None of this is to say that Petraeus was actually a crappy officer whom the press turned into a genius. That would be just as dumb and ultimately unfair as lionizing Petraeus, whose affair had nothing to do with his military leadership or achievements. ”David Petraeus will be remembered as the finest officer of his generation, and as the commander who turned the Iraq War around,” emails military scholar Mark Moyar. But it is to say that a lot of the journalism around Petraeus gave him a pass, and I wrote too much of it. Writing critically about a public figure you come to admire is a journalistic challenge.

Conversations with people close to Petraeus since his resignation from the CIA have been practically funereal. People have expressed shock, and gotten occasionally emotional. It turns out, Mansoor sighed, “David Petraeus is human after all.” I wonder where anyone could have gotten the idea he wasn’t.

Read the whole thing for how it happened to him. I would hope that all political reporters would read this and apply the lessons to themselves. What Spencer describes is a very human inclination, particularly when you are young, to allow oneself to be drawn into the aura of powerful and accomplished people (particularly those who are good at manipulating those around them.) Journalists more than anyone else must learn to resist that human impulse. Spencer’s account shows just how challenging that can be. Good for him for recognizing it. That’s very rare — and admirable. Would that more of his cohorts were able to see how the same thing has happened to them in other political arenas.

It’s certainly not going to happen to the Village elders who are still in deep mourning at the passing of their favorite General’s reputation. It’s truly as if they’ve suffered a death in the family, which is just … ridiculous. The Man Called Petraeus has always been a silly mythic figure and these old timers, at least, should have been learned long ago to resist a man in uniform. A very embarrassing show all around.

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