American Patrol

A KEEN GRASP OF THE OBVIOUS AWARD goes to CIA Director Leon Panetta for his recently released comments to the New Yorker on former Veep Dick Cheney's criticism of the Obama administration's national security policies. “I think he smells some blood in the water on the national-security issue. It’s almost, a little bit, gallows politics. When you read behind it, it’s almost as if he’s wishing that this country would be attacked again, in order to make his point. I think that’s dangerous politics.”

How such a collection of careful, conditional statements, especially so long after the fact, could provoke a response other than "well, duh," much less foment a full blown media controversy, raises some interesting issues. Panetta's comments merely echo much of the analysis of the statements made by Cheney during the May 22nd Cheney/Obama "dueling speeches," and seem, like that analysis, to proceed rationally from the premises Cheney offered-- the only logical proof of Cheney's argument that Obama's policies are endangering the country would be an actual attack on the country.

That merely calling a spade a garden tool would qualify Secretary Panetta for a KGO says something about the changing nature of both the obvious and the way it is grasped in the Obama era. While KGOs during the "Clinton Sandwich on Bush" era (George HW/ Bill/ George W)were largely given to a political or media figure making a statement that was fatuous, pompous, or both, Panetta has earned his simply by stating, in fairly plain terms, what were already commonplace observations in the national dialogue. That such a display of candor by a member of a presidential administration that supposedly stands for transparency and accountability should be rare enough to be noticed, much less awarded, should give one pause.

The media's continued misapprehension that presenting "two sides of every story" without evaluating the truth of each side's case(much less considering that a story may have three, four, or one hundred seventeen sides)constitutes "objective journalism" certainly plays its part in this. An even greater role though is played by the President's attachment to "bipartisanship"-- always a popular buzz word with the focus groups, "bipartisanship" has, like everything else in politics circa 2009, gone from its Republican meaning (agreeing to everything the Administration says without question) to its Democratic counterpart (diluting the actual expressed will of the majority of the American people to avoid upsetting the minority unduly)without ever serving the causes of honesty or pragmatism. Administration compromises, on just about every foreign and domestic issue one can name, litter the ground, while statements that rile the extremist minority become subject of media feuds and calls for retraction and apology.

If the President, his party, and his administration think that they can resolve any of the current crises faced by this country without upsetting some people, they are sadly mistaken. Statements such as Panetta's need to become the norm, not the exception. Obviously.