• The Secret Service let a crazy man be alone with President Obama for an hour. Luckily Tom Friedman isn’t due for another interview for a while.
• Leon Panetta’s memoir, Worthy Fights, has set Beltway tongues a-wagging, for two reasons: Should it have been published so soon after Panetta stepped down as secretary of defense (February 2013)? Does it show that Obama’s policymaking is prey to all-too-human ills (political calculation, Obama’s big ego)? The question of the propriety of publishing is, these days, academic. We are deluged with tell-all memoirs; Panetta’s predecessor at the Pentagon, Bob Gates, committed one of his own. And why not? Better to write a book and sign your name than dish to Bob Woodward. The fact that Obama has flaws and tics will shock only those who took him to be a light-bearer. Panetta believes that in Obama’s case, these flaws and tics have led to calamitous foreign-policy mistakes. That too is clear for all to see.
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