November 13, 2012--Coming Clean

In politics it is often said that the cover up is worse than the infraction and that those doing the covering up get in more trouble for that than because of its cause.

Even though Richard Nixon obstructed justice during the Watergate investigation, which is an actual crime, if he had "come clean" shortly after the break-in at the Democratic National Committee was discovered, it likely would have been a two-day story and he would have effectively "gotten away" with it. Which means that he would not have ultimately been forced to resign the presidency.

There are many other examples in which presidents, senators, and congressmen who were caught with White House interns, lurking in men's rooms, or with cash stuffed in their freezers would also have survived if they had only fessed up.

The situation now involving CIA Director General David Petraeus's affair is already looking as if it is following this familiar trajectory.

It may be a coincidence that news of the affair did not reach any senior people in the White House until the day after the election, but it has the look and feel of something else--intentionally withholding information in order to politically insulate President Obama.

According to reports in the New York Times evidence began to accumulate late this past summer about a sexual relationship between Petraeus and his biographer but none of it got beyond investigators in the FBI and Department of Justice.

Something with this potential to compromise the CIA director should  have been shared with members of the president's national security team and perhaps with the president himself. But this did not happen. It feels as if that was because they did not want a scandal of this magnitude to jeopardize the president's reelection chances.

I say "feels" since there is no real evidence, beyond Fox News innuendo, that anything resembling a high-level cover-up occurred.

But since it might have, it is essential right now to get to the truth and share that with the public.

If I were President Obama I would already have held a meeting with Robert Mueller, the head of the FBI, and Attorney General Eric Holder and told them that by no later than this Wednesday afternoon he wants the full, unvarnished story reported to him and that that report should include recommendations as to who, if anyone, including the two of them, should be held accountable and fired.

Then by Friday morning President Obama should reveal what he learned to the American people and take whatever actions he sees to be appropriate.

We deserve nothing less and, politically, this will turn it into a two-week story. We have a lot of real work that has to get done and we need this distraction--if that is what it turns out to be--behind us.