For all the hysteria over former defense secretary Robert Gates\u2019s new insider memoir of his tenure during the Bush and Obama administrations, the disclosures are more breaches of trust than earth-shattering revelations. Much of\u00a0Duty: Memoirs of a Secretary at War<\/em><\/a>\u00a0is the ordinary stuff of public service. What little gossip in the book there is that may be controversial \u2014 revelations that both Senators Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama cynically opposed the successful Bush-era surge in Iraq on political grounds, or that Vice President Joe Biden is a buffoonish blowhard \u2014 was already common knowledge to many Americans.<\/p>\n Gates sees himself as reluctantly drawn to Washington to help rescue the fading Bush administration\u2019s unpopular wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. In 2009, he grudgingly stayed on at the Defense Department, apparently to add some sobriety to an at times comically inexperienced new Obama team.<\/p>\n There is a long tradition of retired court insiders revealing unflattering details about their bosses before they leave office \u2014 and it is not uplifting. The Roman court insider Petronius thought he could get away with caricaturing the buffoonish emperor Nero through his racy novel\u00a0The Satyricon<\/em>. He didn\u2019t, and was forced to commit suicide as a result.<\/p>\n The problem with the genre of the tell-all is that there are lots of paradoxes that usually make it a lose\/lose proposition for even the most sincere truth-teller.<\/p>\n If things were so bad that an astute insider had to leave government and spill the beans on his superiors while they still were in power, why did he go to work for such suspect people in the first place? Why stay so long on such an unpleasant job?<\/p>\n If Gates confesses that he never really enjoyed the return to the Washington meat grinder, then readers wonder why he was surprised at the cynical careerism that he predictably found.<\/p>\n In our era of progressive-media dominance, memoirs about sitting Republican presidents are usually treated as courageous examples of speaking truth to power. The partisan press praised the cheap tear-down of the Reagan administration by the likes of departing Cabinet members Donald Regan and Alexander Haig.<\/p>\n In the last George W. Bush administration, when disgruntled high-level appointees like Richard Clarke, Lawrence Lindsey, Paul O\u2019Neill, Scott McClellan, and Christine Todd Whitman penned self-serving criticisms of a sitting president and his team, the press hailed them as brave souls who put public duty over their careers.<\/p>\n Try that with a liberal president like Bill Clinton, and suddenly the insider tell-all \u2014 whether by Dick Morris, Robert Reich, or George Stephanopoulos \u2014 is seen at best as na\u00efve and ill-timed and at worst as the whining of a sore loser opportunistically trying to settle scores all the way to the bank.<\/p>\n Should Gates really be surprised that both the media and White House are questioning the motives behind the second half of his memoir on the Obama administration?<\/p>\n Letting the public know about the most intimate trivia of the executive branch raises another paradox. No one wants to read about the boring minutiae of most Cabinet meetings, even if that is what administration officials mostly endure. So instead it is the rarer juicy stuff we flip pages to read about: bureaucratic backstabbing, profanity-laced temper tantrums, or the weird habits of foreign leaders. But aren\u2019t those less common revelations precisely what the world would be better off not knowing about until well after an administration is out of power?<\/p>\n In the Gates memoir, the spicy tidbit that French president Nicolas Sarkozy dismissed the Iranians as inveterate liars makes for livelier reading than another Pentagon budgetary squabble. Yet are such disclosures all that wise, when the U.S. is now in the midst of critical multi-state negotiations over Iran\u2019s nuclear ambitions?<\/p>\n Gates writes that he was dismayed about leaks during his tenure as defense secretary. How does he think the Obama administration feels about his own breach of confidentiality that raises questions about Obama\u2019s sincerity and competency?<\/p>\n The motives behind the tell-all must often be considered suspect. The author must insist that he risks controversy only because he wants the public to know information critical for the survival of transparent democratic governance \u2014 especially information related to the abuse of power.<\/p>\n Yet instead, the media hype only the racy nuggets. With publicists booking the insider author on every conceivable news show, hoping to offer up gossip and jump-start a moneymaking best-seller, can Gates be surprised that critics wonder why he wrote his memoirs now, rather than waiting for Obama to leave office and the limelight?<\/p>\n The irony with\u00a0Duty<\/em>\u00a0is that Gates is an honorable man who served his country effectively and admirably, but he wrote an insider account of a sitting president that belongs to a tired, dishonorable genre.<\/p>\n Victor Davis Hanson is a classicist and historian at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University.<\/em>\u00a0His latest book is<\/em>\u00a0The Savior Generals<\/a><\/span>,\u00a0published this spring by<\/em>\u00a0Bloomsbury Books.<\/em>\u00a0You can reach him by e-mailing\u00a0<\/em>author@victorhanson.com<\/a><\/em>. <\/em><\/p>\n \u00a9 2014 Tribune Media Services, Inc.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Robert Gates’s insider memoir is the latest in a dishonorable genre. by Victor Davis Hanson \/\/\u00a0National Review Online\u00a0 For all the hysteria over former defense secretary Robert Gates\u2019s new insider memoir of his tenure during the Bush and Obama administrations, the disclosures are more breaches of trust than earth-shattering revelations. Much of\u00a0Duty: Memoirs of a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[297],"tags":[12,1067,1044,1021,901],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p466Sb-1NR","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":7088,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/a-modest-proposal-on-ukraine\/","url_meta":{"origin":6935,"position":0},"title":"A Modest Proposal on Ukraine","author":"victorhanson","date":"March 6, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson \/\/\u00a0NRO's the Corner\u00a0 Of all the advice to Obama to reverse his brand of Carterism, the best might simply be to shut his eyes, and every time he gets angry and is about to say something about Israel, stop, and think first to substitute the reset\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Ukraine"","block_context":{"text":"Ukraine","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/the-world\/europe\/ukraine\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2579,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/what-was-that-stupidity-all-about\/","url_meta":{"origin":6935,"position":1},"title":"What Was That ‘Stupidity’ All About?","author":"victorhanson","date":"July 26, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson NRO's\u00a0The Corner The Gates incident seems to have had little to do with race but a lot to do with the natural human misunderstandings that happen every day in police scenes \u2014 and its final twist has everything to do with insider privilege and aristocratic disdain.\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "July 2009"","block_context":{"text":"July 2009","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/archives\/2009\/july-2009\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":5966,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-president-won-sort-of\/","url_meta":{"origin":6935,"position":2},"title":"The President Won–Sort Of","author":"victorhanson","date":"May 21, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"The administration spent the last six months of the campaign in cover-up mode. by Victor Davis Hanson National Review Online On September 11, 2012, Barack Obama was 1 point ahead of Mitt Romney in the ABC and\u00a0Washington Post\u00a0polls. He was scheduled to meet Romney in three weeks for the first\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Campaign 2012"","block_context":{"text":"Campaign 2012","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/obama-administration\/campaign-2012\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2019,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/obamas-predictable-scandals\/","url_meta":{"origin":6935,"position":3},"title":"Obama’s Predictable Scandals","author":"victorhanson","date":"September 24, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson National Review Online The media finally conceded the Obama administration to be inexperienced and inept, reminiscent of the Carter administration \u2014 but, they maintained, not possibly involved in any corruption. Then suddenly scandals erupted on nearly every conceivable front: the crony-capitalist half-billion-dollar loan guarantee to a\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "The Left"","block_context":{"text":"The Left","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/politics\/liberalism\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1472,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/journalists-as-ring-wraiths\/","url_meta":{"origin":6935,"position":4},"title":"Journalists as Ring Wraiths","author":"victorhanson","date":"March 11, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson National Review Online Today\u2019s Washington journalists are like J. R. R. Tolkien\u2019s ring wraiths, petty lords who wanted a few shiny golden Obama rings \u2014 only to end up as shrunken slaves to the One. The Bob Woodward\/Ron Fournier\/Lanny Davis psychodrama is another small reminder that\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Mainstream Media"","block_context":{"text":"Mainstream Media","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/american-culture\/mainstream-media\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2574,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/entertainment-gone-awry\/","url_meta":{"origin":6935,"position":5},"title":"Entertainment Gone Awry","author":"victorhanson","date":"July 30, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson NRO's\u00a0The Corner What's Hollywood to Do? Over the last eight years we saw\u00a0Fahrenheit 911,\u00a0Syriana,\u00a0Redacted,Rendition,\u00a0Stop Loss,\u00a0Lions for Lambs,\u00a0In the Valley of Elah, and a host of other movies released about the U.S. war on terror and the Iraqi conflict. The general theme was that George Bush lied\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "August 2009"","block_context":{"text":"August 2009","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/archives\/2009\/august-2009\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6935"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6935"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6935\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6937,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6935\/revisions\/6937"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6935"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6935"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6935"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"dutygates1388871061\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/01\/dutygates1388871061.jpg?resize=199%2C300&ssl=1\")
<\/p>\n