The Best Interview of the Week Award goes to James Barnes of the National Journal, for the revealing quotes he managed to wrestle out of Leon Panetta. Panetta of course was White House chief of staff while the president was busy developing his "complicated human relationship" (Mike McCurry's phrase) with Monica Lewinsky. Panetta revealed to Barnes that impeding the development of just such relationships was always an uphill battle.
"We were sensitive to those issues," Panetta said. If "a woman wanted to ride with him [the President of the United States] in the limo, we took steps to make sure that didn't happen In the evenings, we always made sure he had company when he was with friends."
The White House reaction to Panetta's remarks was instantaneous: All the former chief of staff meant, of course, was that the president had merely to be kept from situations that might be misconstrued, to avoid the appearance of impropriety. But that spin won't wash. Panetta's other comments to Barnes make it clear why these prophylactic (so to speak) steps were taken and what, precisely, the president's staff was guarding against when they refused to let him be alone with women.
"You never control all of the private moments," Panetta went on. "If it turned out that somehow his dark side prevailed in these moments of temptation, it would be a disappointment " And humanly complicated, too.