Petraeus Complex

                With the U.S. Postal Service facing bankruptcy, a potential “fiscal cliff” forcing Congress to move quickly or face dire national consequences, and a sudden surge of fighting in the Gaza Strip, it’s no surprise that the news story that has been dominating headlines for the past two weeks has been a sex scandal.  Time and time again, Americans have shown that despite what major events may be happening around us, nothing enthralls us like a sex scandal.  There is just something the private affairs between two consenting adults that titillates us so much that we are willing to sit through weeks and weeks of over-coverage and over-analysis of events transpired, regardless of how trivial the matter is.  Granted, it is somewhat of an issue when the politician is engaging in illegal sexual affairs, such as with Congressman Mark Foley (underage boys) and former Governor Eliot Spitzer (prostitutes), but when the relationship is legal, between consenting adults, and has zero influence on the job the politician performs, it should be a non-issue.  While the affairs of people with political careers, such as General Petraeus, Bill Clinton, and Mark Sanford were all extra-marital, the offense was a domestic issue, and should not have made national news.  In no way did these men’s transgressions influence the way they perform their job.  At virtually no other job could a person face termination because they cheated on their wife.

                Yet some allege that the director of the CIA having an affair does compromise our nation’s security.  The only support of this is two months ago, when Paula Broadwell (Petraeus’ mistress) mentioned during a speech at Denver University that the Benghazi attack was believed to be perpetrated as an attempt to free several Libyan prisoners being held by theC.I.A.  This story has not been confirmed by any other sources and the CIA denied her claims. 

                That is the only situation in which some believe Ms. Broadwell may have gained sensitive knowledge, and even President Obama made a statement last week that there was “no evidence” that any classified information was disclosed that could compromise national security.  Yet despite the lack of any negative effect on the nation or Petraeus’ performance as director of the CIA, he was still forced to step down, and Obama still had to devote significant time and focus away from dealing with Congress on the impending “fiscal cliff”.  With so many critical decisions and discussions to be made on the econonoy with such a sharp deadline, the last thing we need is more distractions.  And yet another distraction is exactly what we wanted – the Petraeus ‘scandal’ has dominated political conversations on the news, political talk shows, editorial pages, and the blogosphere.  It seems to be the only news story people are talking about.  I guess if we want people to start paying attention to foreign affairs and the economy, we need to find a way to tie sex into it.