My subway reading this morning was the French philosopher René Girard, and this sentence leaped out at me: “Scapegoating can continue [in contemporary culture] only if its victims are perceived primarily as scapegoaters.” Spot on: It was considered okay to vilify Cheney because he appeared to be scapegoating Democrats for America’s alleged vulnerability to enemies. Now it is considered okay to vilify Panetta because he appeared to be scapegoating Cheney as someone who, for partisan purposes, roots for America’s attackers.

This is why, politically, Panetta’s comment reminds me of the old line, “It was worse than a crime, it was a blunder.” Until Panetta made the blame of Cheney so explicit, it was easier for people to reach their own conclusions about Cheney and his criticisms – and those conclusions could, in the case of many citizens, have been close to Panetta’s own. But now that Panetta has transformed Cheney into the public scapegoat, the morally self-aware citizen will always have to beware that he is not demonizing Cheney. After all, Cheney couldn’t really wish for a terrorist attack, could he? To phrase the charge so explicitly is near-automatically to refute it. Michael Kinsley taught us that a gaffe was when a politician tells the truth. In this case, by blurting out what he suspected to be the truth, Mr. Panetta has seriously undermined his own administration’s case.