Foreshadowed by the author this morning on the Chris Matthews Show, Elizabeth Bumiller writes an article in the NYTimes on David Petraeus' new place in the Obama administration.
Petraeus and Obama's relationship
According to Bumiller, she writes that Petraeus has a seat at the table and was called on several times during Obama's latest Afghanistan meeting but wasn't given the only seat at the table like he did in the Bush administration.
But the general’s closest associates say that underneath the surface of good relations, the celebrity commander faces a new reality in Mr. Obama’s White House: He is still at the table, but in a very different seat.
No longer does the man who oversees the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have one of the biggest voices at National Security Council meetings, as he did when Mr. Bush gave him 20 minutes during hourlong weekly sessions to present his views in live video feeds from Baghdad. No longer is the general, with the Capitol Hill contacts and web of e-mail relationships throughout Washington’s journalism establishment, testifying in media explosions before Congress, as he did in September 2007, when he gave 34 interviews in three days.
Then she appears to go off in a tangent and suggest that the reason Obama is doing this is because he's afraid Petraeus will run against him in 2012, with no evidence suggesting that. Let me repeat. NO EVIDENCE OR SOURCES SUGGESTING SUCH.
The change has fueled speculation in Washington about whether General Petraeus might seek the presidency in 2012. His advisers say that it is absurd — but in immediate policy terms, it means there is one less visible advocate for the military in the administration’s debate over whether to send up to 40,000 additional troops to Afghanistan.
General Petraeus’s aides now privately call him “Dave the Dull,” and say he has largely muzzled himself from the fierce public debate about the war to avoid antagonizing the White House, which does not want pressure from military superstars and is wary of the general’s ambitions in particular.
Personally, I think it's good that the President is backing away from the generals only view of the previous administration. It's another one of those non-things that Obama hasn't changed from the previous administration (snark). That part of the article is good.
However, addressing the other part of the article: there is no indication in the article that Gen. Petraeus is even a republican. I just find it flabbergasting that the NYTimes could just make stuff up like the pure speculation and call it news.