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gingrich, bobby jindal, they're all doing it. howa howard, i have to tell you, this is something like i have never seen before. let's start with these clips from the sunday talk show circuit. republicans ran with mitt romney remarks that the president ran because of giving gifts to minorities and young voters. >> i just think it's nuts. i mean, first of all, it's insulting. this would be like walmart having a bad week and going the customers have really been unruly. i mean, the job of a political leader in part is to understand the people. if we can't offer a better future that is be...

Think there's two things in petraeus. there's the surveillance state aspect of it. why was the fbi raiding his e-mail and what is the threshold for that? then i think the way in which the mythology that david petraeus cultivated around himself. it was a combination of performance in the battled field, i'm not the best judge of this, substantively quite good along with a savvy way of getting the press to go along with the story he was telling about david petraeus. one of the things we're seeing in the context of this decade is the military is the most trusted institution in american life. part ...

Nominated. >> there's a power struggle going on between the department of defense and the entire rest of the intelligence community. i don't see how you have a four-star general heading up the cia. >> we should not have a military person leading a civilian agency at this time. >> you can't have the military, i think, control, you know, most of the major aspects of intelligence. >> the fact that he is a part of the military today is the major problem. >> tom, one of the concerns there is the cia would be an independent check on pentagon intelligence. i wonder where that objection went. >> well,...

Half. depending on how you count them. this was a media strorry, it would be dishonest not to look at my role here. you know, i want to take a little bit of an issue with something tom said. you know, petraeus likes journalists and so forth. i think petraeus had a mission to pull off, getting information out to the public that was favorable about about the war itself. that's what i want to look at. it happened to be the case as i think, you know, tom experienced as well. a lot of petraeus' peers did not want the back and forth he made himself available for. it was occasion for myself viewing p...

It's heightened because the affair was with a woman writing a biography of him. i want to bring in tom ricks, author of "the generals." also senior fellow for new american security. tom, i'll start with you. do you think we should be this should occasion us to take a hard look at the coverage of general petraeus over the last eight years? >> no question that general petraeus recognized he needed to talk to the media. i think, what worries me are the lessons of it. hey, you are too smart like david petraeus and you get in trouble. it's the wrong lesson. petraeus understood one of the roles of t...