The Mind of Petraeus: Why Cheaters Think They Won’t Get Caught

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The double ink behind understanding consequences and acting despite them

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Gen. David Petraeus testifies before the Senate Armed Services Committe on Capitol Hill in Washington, April 8, 2008.

        

As of last week, the long gray line got longer still. Actually, there are two long gray lines: the proud one made up of graduates from the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, and the far more ignoble one made up of famous, powerful, middle-aged men who bring their lives and careers to ruin when they get caught dallying with women other than their wives. Gen. David Petraeus, whose just-revealed affair forced him to step down as Director of the Central Intelligence Agency, is the rare man who belongs to both.
 
In all the political and media froth that has been churned up since the scandal broke, one question that has been raised is the same one that always comes up at this point in these all-too familiar scandals: What the hell was he thinking? As recently as 1987 P.G. H. (pre-Gary Hart), politicians and other masters of the universe could get away with such randy antics pretty easily. But ever since Hart, who was on a glide path toward the 1988 Democratic presidential nomination, crashed and burned when he was caught having an affair, the game has changed. There’s no such thing as the discreet peccadillo anymore—not if a headline-hungry media has anything to say about it. And since the dawn of the Internet age, in which it’s impossible to hide your electronic footprints, the game has only gotten more dangerous. The fact that Petraeus, the nation’s former top spook, was tripped up by e-mail, is nothing short of jawdropping.
 
By now we’re familiar with all of the psychological and evolutionary explanations for this kind of sublime recklessness. Powerful men are natural risk-takers, type-A strivers; they’re naturally acquisitive — of power, wealth, and yes, sex. They’re charismatic egotists, and they’re often away from home for long stretches of time. All of this can be equally true of powerful women, of course, and yet they’re far less inclined to cheat. We know the familiar evolutionary answers for that too: Men, with their lifetime supply of sperm, are hardwired to mate repeatedly and indiscriminately. Women, who make a far higher investment in breeding, are more selective. What’s more, it’s anthropologically true if politically incorrect that while men, as a rule, are irresistibly attracted to youth and beauty, women can be made equally dizzy by power and the access to resources it implies. (If you doubt that, try this: Picture Donald Trump‘s wives. Now picture Donald Trump. Any questions?)
The tougher riddle — the one that’s never so well-answered — is why these men are so heedless of consequences. They define themselves by their status; they have typically worked a lifetime to acquire it and will fight like wildmen to keep it. And they know with virtual drop-dead certainty that they will lose it all if they step out of line. And then they go right ahead and step. Maybe that doesn’t matter to an independently wealthy man like Trump or a political Houdini like Bill Clinton. But most of the rest of them — Edwards and Spitzer and Weiner and Ensign and  Sanford and the rest of the sorry queue — ought to be cautionary tales for anyone who comes later.
 
The explanation for the fact that that lesson so often doesn’t get learned may lie in the narcissism that can sit at the heart of power.  Narcissism has been a badly overworked word of late — applied to all manner of selfish or preening behaviors that really don’t rise to the level of the true narcissistic personality disorder, which affects no more than 3% of the population. But that 3% is disproportionately represented among the ranks of the famous. What’s more, like all behavioral traits, narcissism can exist sub-clinically: you can have many of the dangerous traits of a narcissist without being a truly diagnosable case.
 
For both capital-N and lower-case narcissists, some of what may be going on is a sort of learned double-think. Of course powerful men are smart enough to be aware of consequences, but the charmed ride they’ve enjoyed for so long leads them to believe — viscerally if not rationally — that those rules somehow won’t apply to them. One of the reasons young, professional athletes so often get into trouble for DWI or domestic battery or weapons possession is that they truly have grown up outside of the rules — passing classes they never attend, graduating from fine colleges despite poor grades, receiving $10 million signing bonuses before throwing a pitch or taking a snap. For most famous men, the ride starts later but the lesson of invulnerability is just as powerfully learned.
“With leaders like this, there truly is no awareness of the likelihood that they’ll suffer any consequences,” says psychologist Amy Brunell of Ohio State University at Newark. “The idea is, ‘This doesn’t apply to me; somehow I’m not going to get caught.’ We’ve done studies about decision-making and impulsivity in narcissists and they really don’t think about the consequence.”
 
Psychologist Keith Campbell of the University of Georgia, who studies narcissists in relationships, has run similar experiments in which subjects play games of luck or skill and wager imaginary money on the results. A great deal about how aggressively they play seems to be linked to how high they score on questionnaires that measure narcissism. “On risk-taking and betting tests, narcissists tend to overpredict their performance,” Campbell says. “And they tend not to learn from the times they don’t win.”
A certain psychic drunkenness may also come into play. Narcissists are hooked on public adoration — from crowds, from interns, or, in Petraeus’s case, from hagiographic biographers. There’s a driving-while-impaired quality to their decision-making powers when they’re on this kind of high, and their judgment just flies out the window. “This need for getting adored creates a myopia,” says psychologist Aaron Pincus of Penn State University. “They’re not thinking in the long term. So if the intern makes her self available in the Oval Office right now, that’s all I’m thinking about.”
Adds Campbell: “It’s not that guys like Tiger Woods are aliens. They’re like anyone else, but they have stronger needs for ego enhancement and validation. Throw in overconfidence and a habit of walking on people and you get self destructive behavior. It bites you in the ass over time.”
 
In some cases, once-bitten does not mean twice shy, but those cases are rare. Clinton was serially caught and serially wriggled free. But even he, to all appearances, at last fell into line after 1998, though the calming effects of age—to say nothing of his bouts with heart disease—may have played a role too. But other men get just a single strike. Petraeus, Edwards, Spitzer and the rest would surely like to turn back the clock, but barring a longshot bid at redemption (certainly impossible in Edwards’ case), the public is probably done with them.
There would, perhaps, be something good in all this if the tragedy of these men served as teachable moments for others — and the fact is they probably do. You can’t prove a negative, and we can never know of the career-wrecking affairs that didn’t take place because successful men looked at the narcissistically fallen and made a sharp turn in the other direction . But there are more than enough — as we repeatedly learn — who who plow straight ahead, and there probably always will be. David Petraeus, the latest in a very long line, is highly unlikely to be the last.
From the Magazine:Spyfall http://swampland.time.com/2012/11/15/spyfall/


Jeffrey Kluger

Jeffrey Kluger, senior editor, oversees TIME's science and technology reporting.
http://science.time.com/author/jkluger/

Christians in Politics: Choice and Responsibility

According to Wikipedia, “Politics is derived from the Greek word politikos, meaning "of, for, or relating to citizens". It is the practice and theory of influencing other people on a civic or individual level. More narrowly, it refers to achieving and exercising positions of governance — organized control over a human community, particularly a state. A variety of methods are employed in politics, which include promoting one's own political views among people, negotiation with other political subjects, making laws, and exercising force, including warfare against adversaries. Politics is exercised on a wide range of social levels, from clans and tribes of traditional societies, through modern local governments, companies and institutions up to sovereign states, to the international level”.

Few topics evoke intense emotions like discussions with political themes. For many people, politics remains a controversial subject. Some see themselves as less godly if they should participate or “taint” themselves in the political process. Politicians are derided, abused, and demonized (in many instances deserving so). The question then is, shouldn't something as significant as politics receives more than a passing glance from Christians, shouldn't we be bothered about how policies and decisions are made about where we live, how we do business, relate to each, defend our rights and responsibilities?

Many Christians believed it is not their job to get in involved in politics, on the pretext that the task of straightening out a fallen world has no correlation to the weightier matter of saving lost souls. The other argument is the caution in James 4:4 that “…friendship with the world is enmity with God, and Jesus’ statement in John 18:36, “My Kingdom is not of this world….” They also believe that since God is supreme, he can take care of politics on their behalf. But we have to be very careful that in appealing to God's almighty power we do not use it as a convenient excuse in abdicating our own responsibilities. Psalms 115:16 says “The highest heavens belong to the LORD, but the earth he has given to mankind”. To do what?  To "Be fruitful and multiply. Fill the earth and govern it. Reign over …” Genesis 1:28

The idea that politics is a dirty game no longer holds water. If it is dirty, it is so, not in principle but as part of our own human imperfection; and it must be seen in that light and not relegated to the back-burner as a game for crooks and criminals. Politicians are merely the microcosm of society; they are no better or worse than the general public. To think of it, is it possible to expect politicians to be better than the people who elect them? Do we now say that, because there are a few doctors giving the medical profession a bad name we should shut down the healthcare system? Should the banking system be abolished because a few bankers defraud their customers? Even in the religious circles, we all know a few bad eggs among our religious leaders, is that enough reason to close down our Churches. Politics is not immune from the general breakdown in societal values. Instead of avoiding it, the continual debate on correcting the anomalies is a better option.

As Bill Maher, an American political commentator, television host, and satirist commented some time ago, “It shouldn't be a bragging point that “Oh, I don’t get involved in politics,” as if that makes you somehow cleaner. No, that makes you derelict of duty in a republic. Liars and panderers in government would have a much harder time of it if so many people didn't insist on their right to remain ignorant and blindly agreeable.”

As Christians, it is important to have regular debates on our cultural indoctrination as regard politics and the political process, because a great many of us are held down by dis-empowering notions of politics, which we have, through willful ignorance refuse to question. This is a dead trap for which established political gladiators are more than happy to have us in, since it serves their purpose of remaining unchallenged in their feasting and exploitation of the collective birth-rights. As Thomas Jefferson penned years ago, "If a nation expects to be ignorant and free in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be." Political education remains our only antidote to political ignorance.

We must realize that in a democracy, the only way to ensure lasting change is through the political process. And we cannot change the political process by siting on the fence or avoiding it altogether. The goal of politics is acquisition of power, and power determines the allocation of resources, resources provide leverage for political negotiations. As Robert Linthicum put it in his essay, “Building a People of Power,” “Power is the capacity, ability and willingness to act!  “Capacity” means, “the capability to produce, perform or deploy”.

For a group to have the capacity to act means that they have developed or gathered the resources together in order to exercise power.  For instance, if a military unit has been issued rifles, but hasn’t been given any ammunition, then they don’t have the capacity to act.  Even though they might want to attack the enemy and are expert marksmen, the absence of ammunition means that they don’t have the resources at their disposal that enables them to act.

Second, power is the ability to act.  Ability consists of having the skill, aptitude and/or competence to carry out the action one wishes to undertake.  Thus, to use the military illustration once again, if one has adequate rifles and ammunition in abundance, but no one in the unit knows how to fire the rifles or can’t hit “the side of a barn”, they don’t have the ability to act.  Capacity without ability still creates a powerless situation.

Thirdly, power is the willingness to act.  There must be a resolve and a commitment on the part of the group to act, even if that means taking the risks necessary to act.  Thus, if one has sufficient ordinances (capacity) and the skill to use them (ability), but they do not have the resolve or motivation to go into battle, then you would still have a powerless situation.”

As an instrument of attaining power, allocating resources, negotiating terms and formulating policy, politics must be seen as a responsibility of all citizens including Christians even though we have a choice not to participate. Christians especially must see themselves as agents of change in the political arena, they must take their place as the “salt of the earth” and the “light of the world”. We have not been sent to a select part of the earth (select professions), but to all the earth. If the kingdom of this world must become the Kingdom of our God, then behoves us to participate in that transition. Jesus said, “Behold, I am sending you out like sheep in the midst of wolves; be wary and wise as serpents, and be innocent (harmless, guileless, and without falsity) as doves. Be on guard against men [whose way or nature is to act in opposition to God]; Matthew 10:16, 17 (AMP).

Just as we do not give up on ourselves in our quest to live according to biblical standards, this attitude and deposition must be our anchor as we face the challenges in the political arena. We must not let the fear of “political wolves” drive us away from exerting our influence in the political process. As is the case in every other aspect of our lives, we must request for the wisdom of God in our participation in politics. If any of (us) lacks wisdom, let him ask God, who gives generously to all without reproach, and it will be given him. James 1:5

Citizens (including Christians) involvement in politics is matter of individual choice and prerogative, but it is also a responsibility. In the words of J. John (Canon) “…everybody ought to be involved in politics. We are affected either directly or indirectly on a daily basis by the way our nation is managed. So it is crucial that the Christian should stay informed on the workings of our governmental systems. ‘For evil to triumph it is merely necessary that good men do nothing’ (Edmund Burke). To say it another way – all that is necessary for the weak and powerless to be crushed is for no one to stand up for them. Politics is about how our nation is run; if we want our government to run more effectively and more ethically, we must play our part by getting involved. Through the power of the vote and advocacy, Christians have the opportunity to ensure government is just and fair to all citizens. We should not forfeit or take for granted our valuable voice and our right to vote”. We owe it to ourselves, to God and posterity to maximize the most of our material, physical, mental, and spiritual potential in contributing to the world we see as we hope for the world to come.