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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