November 18, 2012
Am I the only person in the world who could not care less if David Petraeus was shagging his biographer? I mean, don't get me wrong. I'm reading all the stories, because I'm a shameless hypocrite just like every other gutter-brained internet browser who maintains a proud interest in quality news. Plus, it's impossible not to be absorbed by the sheer magnificence of the military strategy and time-management skills on display as the US army chief juggles an entire army, a muscular mistress, an apparently rigorous simultaneous relationship with a ''social-liaison officer'' in Tampa and the wildcard factor of some shirtless FBI agent to boot.
It's organisationally impressive, at the very least - surely there must be a military braid for that level of hand-eye co-ordination.
But should it really be the end of his career?
The US Defence Secretary, Leon Panetta, has announced a military ethics review, after being questioned about the whole intrigue during his Australian trip this week. Panetta's travelling companion, Hillary Clinton, didn't have much to say about Petraeus, but there's a woman whose life would have been made much, much easier had her husband restricted himself to a spot of discreet biographer-rogering and left it at that.
Unlike president Bill Clinton, Petraeus didn't fib, squirm or dissemble when he was busted. Having already discontinued the affair, he announced that he had failed his own and the army's moral standards, and marched himself briskly out of the building. No whining interviews about how everybody else was doing it. No self-pitying departure-lounge press conferences sobbing about how one goatish lapse had overshadowed all the other great work he'd done.
Why was it so head-spinningly weird to see a major public figure cop it sweet in such a prompt fashion, without staying to argue the toss about whether the resignation was entirely unavoidable?
Oh, yeah - right. It's because that pretty much never happens. It's incredibly rare for a public figure, having succumbed to an indulgence, to respond by forbidding himself further indulgence.
Which is what, funnily enough, makes
Petraeus quite a loss to public life. Sometimes the best test of a person is not the wrongdoing they commit - everybody sins to some extent - but the way they handle it.
Read more:
http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/po ... .html#ixzz2CYaWmbYI