David Brooks, Elitism, and Stanley McChrystal

David Brooks argued the other day that Stanley McChrystal's now-famous comments should have never been made public. Brooks laments the inability of today's elite figures to "kvetch," to blow off some steam with underlings in response to their tough lives.

General McChrystal was excellent at his job. He had outstanding relations with the White House and entirely proper relationships with his various civilian partners in the State Department and beyond. He set up a superb decision-making apparatus that deftly used military and civilian expertise.

But McChrystal, like everyone else, kvetched. And having apparently missed the last 50 years of cultural history, he did so on the record, in front of a reporter. And this reporter, being a product of the culture of exposure, made the kvetching the center of his magazine profile.

By putting the kvetching in the magazine, the reporter essentially took run-of-the-mill complaining and turned it into a direct challenge to presidential authority. He took a successful general and made it impossible for President Obama to retain him.

The reticent ethos had its flaws. But the exposure ethos, with its relentless emphasis on destroying privacy and exposing impurities, has chased good people from public life, undermined public faith in institutions and elevated the trivial over the important.

I understand Brooks's argument here. And I do think "gotcha journalism" is a major fault of today's politics, dissuading many an ideal public servant from running for office or even getting involved.

However, Brooks' line of thinking in this context is problematic. First, it is a symptom of another large problem with our politics: the media's cozy relationship with those in office. As Andrew Sullivan wrote this week (as well as Frank Rich today), it's problematic we did not hear more about McChrystal sooner. Though Brooks tries to get away with painting McChrystal as an angel who enjoyed great relations with the White House, that's not the case. And despite McChrystal's penchant for risky behavior, Obama continued to provide him with all he could want.

That leads me to the second problem with Brooks' column. The public has a right to know when a general jeopardizes a mission funded by their tax dollars, especially a mission that is a part of the longest war in this country's history. This wasn't run of the mill complaining, either. McChrystal again challenged the authority of the President's administration, and he did so with considerable audacity.

Brooks seems to be doing the compartmentalizing Harry Boyte, from yesterday's post, rejects. Brooks assumes that because we're all fallible as humans, we all should be given time to indulge our inner monster, to spew a few choice words to no particular audience. Unfortunately, we don't live in that vacuum. Everything is political, whether we like it or not.

But in this particular situation, Hastings, the Rolling Stone reporter who embarrassed the traditional media, did the right thing. McChrystal's comments illustrated a pattern of behavior that undermined civilian authority over the United States military. Hastings did not make it impossible for Obama to retain his general, as Brooks argues; McChrystal did it himself.