The last temptation of Petraeus

Sure, the spotlight these men have attracted and the altitude they've reached should, theoretically, give them greater pause. But they've either become accustomed to or outright sought a kind of adulation in the public arena that probably isn't mirrored in their marriages. A spouse is unlikely to provide it. A spouse knows you too well for that, and gives you something deeper, truer and so much less electric.

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's 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.

The headline of The Washington Post story that weighed in on Broadwell's wardrobe asserted that he "let his guard down," a phrase that portrays him as passive, possibly even a victim. The story notes that his former aides considered him "the consummate gentleman and family man." It goes on to say that Broadwell was "willing to take full advantage of her special access" to him.

... contd.

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