Panetta being Panetta
by digby
My piece on Salon today is about that mavericky, bipartisan, centrist hero Leon Panetta:
If there exists a more quintessential inside DC player than Leon Panetta, I’d be hard pressed to name him or her. He’s been kicking around the corridors of power for well over 40 years serving first as a Republican and later as a Democrat in Congress and a member of the executive branch. Leon Panetta is what people in the beltway like to call a “maverick” which translates into someone who goes his own way against the interest of his party. Mavericks are loved by the establishment media for always being willing to condemn their own side thus creating an illusion of bipartisanship where none exists.
Panetta comes by his reputation for integrity honestly, however it’s not quite as heroic as people remember. To his eternal credit he resigned the Nixon White House in 1970 over its egregious racial policies. But he was hardly the lone ranger in his protest. This excerpt from Rick Perlstein’s book Nixonland puts his actions into some perspective. The issue bubbled up after Nixon’s nominee to the Supreme Court, Harold Carswell, was revealed to be an unreconstructed racist and Nixon defended him. At the same time staffers at the Department of Health, Education and Welfare were all becoming concerned about the policies they were required to enforce (or not enforce) and Panetta was a leader among them.
But Perlstein reports that it wasn’t until Panetta read an article in the Washington Daily News with the headline “Nixon seeks to fire HEW’s Rights chief for liberal views” that he offered his resignation. And it was after that that he gave a speech to the National Education Association in which he said, “The cause of justice is being destroyed not by direct challenge but by indirection, by confusion, by disunity and by a lack of leadership and commitment to a truly equal society.” Six others resigned with him. Shortly thereafter 200 staffers at HEW petitioned the head of HEW Robert Finch saying they were greatly concerned about the future leadership role of HEW on civil rights... read on
He did the right thing there. But he did it again to Clinton over Lewinsky and helped to get the ball rolling for GOP calls for resignation and impeachment and he is doing it right now to Obama saying that he was fighting for continued presence in Iraq and to intervene in Syria and the president refused to listen (which is hotly disputed by the administration btw.) This is his schtick.
He isn't history's greatest monster. He's done some good over his long career. But he's first and foremost about one thing and one thing only: Leon Panetta. He's not unlike those other mavericks Joe Lieberman and John McCain that way. The question is why presidents are continually surprised when he leaves their administration before it's over and then writes tell all books and gives critical insider interviews. That's just Panetta being Panetta. It's all about him.
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