At Bloomberg View, former Obama aide Cass Sunstein – still connected by marriage to Obama through his wife, U.N. Ambassador Samantha Power – praised “George W. Bush’s Graceful Silence.” Democrats often appreciate the gentility of ex-presidents named Bush....even if they never quite criticize the Clintons and Carters who never stay silent during Republican presidencies.
Sunstein did not appreciate former Obama cabinet members blabbing against Obama in their memoirs.
Jim Miklaszewski kept it relatively diplomatic, declaring "there's something amiss here." But Joe Scarborough was blunt: "boy, that's damning," said the Morning Joe host.
They were characterizing Miklaszewski's description of the Obama administration's "micromanagement" of the Department of Defense in which communication flows only in one direction: from the White House to the Pentagon. On today's Morning Joe, NBC's Pentagon correspondent reported that former SecDefs Robert Gates and Leon Panetta had recently "lambaste[d]" that micromanagement.
Those who see Leon Panetta as a stalking horse for Hillary Clinton just got some more ammunition for their argument. Last week, Panetta helped distance Hillary from President Obama's foreign policy failures by blasting Obama for mistakes in Syria and Iraq.
But today, discussing the foreign policy issue on which Hillary is most vulnerable--Benghazi--Panetta suddenly became very forgiving. Appearing on the Diane Rehm show, Panetta declared "nobody is to blame for Benghazi." The relevant part of the interview begins at 33:30.
Marc Lamont Hill, liberal CNN contributor and host of HuffPost Live, appeared on Sunday’s State of the Union with Candy Crowley and did his best to smear former Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta for daring to criticize President Obama on foreign policy. Appearing alongside Neera Tanden, Newt Gingrich and S.E. Cupp, Hill proclaimed that Panetta’s criticism of Obama was “the most disgusting example of Monday morning quarterbacking I have ever seen.”
PBS NewsHour seemed upset at Leon Panetta's apparently questionable loyalties to Democrats from the beginning of her interview segment on Thursday. She incorrectly stated that Panetta served as "President Reagan's chief of staff." She meant President Clinton.
She scolded Panetta (and other Obama administration officials) for daring to write memoirs before Obama concludes his presidency, wondering why they couldn't be loyal:
MRC president Brent Bozell appeared on The Kelly File on Fox News on Friday night to discuss the very limited TV coverage of Leon Panetta's book and its tough critique of President Obama's foreign-policy actions (and inaction).
Bozell said: “This is a bombshell. It is an absolute bombshell. Whether you agree with the policy or not, it's irrelevant. It's a bombshell when the secretary of defense says that the president has completely screwed up foreign policy.”
Remember when dissent was patriotic? When people like Hillary Clinton screeched that "we have a right to disagree with any administration?" Forget about it. That's so, like, 2003. You know, when George W. Bush was President.
Things are different today. Now, criticizing a sitting president is wrong. Very wrong. Just ask Joe Scarborough, who on today's Morning Joe accused Leon Panetta of a "lack of character" for criticizing President Obama in his book and public appearances.
Elite Dems across America might be scuttling away from Barack Obama. But the president can count on at least one man to stand by him: MSNBC's Thomas Roberts. On today's Morning Joe, Roberts accused Leon Panetta of criticizing President Obama for base motives: "getting paid" off his book, and currying close ties with Hillary Clinton.
Roberts' lame attempt to undermine Panetta came after Joe Scarborough and Mark Halperin [citing Ron Fournier] said Panetta's criticism of Obama echoes what elite Dems from Washington to Hollywood are saying in private—but are afraid to express in public.
Graham pointed out that when the former Secretary of Defense gave his first interview to CBS’s 60 Minutes, neither one of the other two major broadcast networks (ABC or NBC) covered it and the result was the same with O’Reilly’s interview.
Speaking on how “especially upsetting again” it was that none of the networks joined O’Reilly in asking Panetta about the Obama administration’s response to the 2012 attack in Benghazi. On what Panetta said about Benghazi, Graham thought that “Panetta's answers on that were really weak.”
On Sunday, CBS's "60 Minutes" will broadcast Scott Pelley's recent interview of former Defense Secretary Leon Panetta.
In CBS's promotional tease, which was broadcast on Friday, in response to Pelley's question about whether he was confident that the U.S. troop withdrawal "was the right thing to do" at the time it was done, Panetta said, "No, I wasn't." That's big news. How big? So big that, based on searches on Panetta's last name, the Associated Press and the New York Times have yet to cover it. In other words, it's fair to contend that these two leading icons of American journalism are waiting for an administration response before they run the story, so they can then turn it into a "White House denies" piece. The video follows the jump.