We all shoulda had a V8
Frank Bruni, reprinted in today’s Akron Beacon Journal, unpacks the deeply sexist prevailing narrative for thinking and talking about the David Petraeus extra-marital affair and resignation story. 

“It has to be more than mere coincidence that Bill Clinton had an affair with a White House intern; Newt Gingrich with a congressional aide (now his wife); John Edwards with a woman who followed him around with a camera, creating hagiographic mini-documentaries about his presidential campaign; and Petraeus with a woman who made him the subject of a biography so worshipful that its main riddle, joked Jon Stewart, was whether Petraeus was “awesome or incredibly awesome.”

These mighty men didn’t just choose mistresses, by all appearances. They chose fonts of gushing reverence. That’s at least as deliberate and damnable as any signals the alleged temptresses put out.

Petraeus’ choice suggests an additional measure of vanity. Broadwell exercises compulsively, as he does. She’s fascinated by all matters military, as he is.

“Petraeus once joked I was his avatar,” she told the Charlotte Observer a while back. So by his own assessment, he was having an affair with a version of himself.

And yet it’s the women in these situations who are often subjected to a more vigorous public shaming — and assigned greater responsibility…..

An article in Slate asked “how could he — this acclaimed leader and figure of rectitude — allow such a thing to a happen?” The italics are mine, because the verb is a telling one. “She went a bit ga-ga for the general,” the article later observes, adding: “She may have made herself irresistible.”

Such adamant women, such pregnable men. We’ve been stuck on this since Eve, Adam and the Garden of Eden. And it’s true: Eve shouldn’t have been so pushy with the apple.

But Adam could have had a V8.”

David Brooks, reprinted in the same paper, provides a very thoughtful analysis of the political challenges facing the president and Republican leaders willing to put county before party. 

“But the point is the only way to get things done in a divided polarized country is side by side — an acceptable Democratic project paired with an acceptable Republican one.

The fiscal-cliff talks are just the first chapter in this long process. In this first episode, the Democrats should get higher revenues from the rich (elections have consequences) and the Republicans should get some entitlement reform. But the main point is to lay the predicate for the bigger deals to come.

This is about horse-trading. It’s about conducting meetings in which people don’t lecture each other; they deal. It’s about isolating those who want an economic culture war. It’s about making clear offers and counteroffers.

If you want a great example of how these deals might work, check out a new paper at Third Way (www.thirdway.org/publications/613) called “The Bargain.” It offers a perfect model of how you might structure a series of big trades to move the country back on the growth path — on innovation policy, tax policy, spending policy and so on.

The more you put on the table, the more trading is possible, the better the atmosphere and the more you might get done. If you only put one idea on the table at a time, then everybody gets gridlocked and nothing gets done.

The economic crisis interrupted him last time, but Obama still has a chance to build a great middle-class economy. It’ll take a dealmaker, not a warrior.”

All of us, our leaders and ourselves, need to do the work to push past the sound bite mine fields of the culture wars and commit to seeing through the fog so we can all get serious about recovering a progressive democratic society with living wage jobs, a working safety net, and strong transportation, education and health care infrastructures to support families, communities, and prosperity. 

The election has shuffled the deck only slightly, but removing some of the worst Tea Party knuckleheads should help leaders in both parties return to problem solving, on the basis of compromise and collaboration, so we can choose a V8.