Paula Broadwell Was Going To Be A Senator, Because Why Not

Good morning, Wonkette darlings! It is Monday, and you have to ask yourself: are you getting a little bored with the Petraeus scandal? We mean, sure, it’s fun thinking about the crazy grifting identical twins and hot (?) shirtless FBI guys, but the actual core of the scandal — married dude and married lady with similar interests (one of which being the married dude’s awesomeness) spend a lot of time together and end up boning — is starting to seem a little played out. What this scandal needs is a counterfactual shot in the arm, such as: what if the FBI had never found those pesky email sexts, and then, a few years from now, it came out that CIA director Petraeus was having a sex affair with North Carolina Senator Paula Broadwell? That would certainly be an exciting scandal that would rock the nation and whatever political party Broadwell belonged to for weeks, would it not?

Time Magazine (aka “the one that is still in business, barely”) has come out with a long-ish article about the Petraeus scandal, entitled “Spyfall” (aka “get it, it is like the popular James Bond movie, please continue buying our magazine”), that contains this choice nugget:

Nor was Broadwell without a larger plan. After running with Lance Armstrong [!!! --eds] in July, she volunteered her secret purpose to at least six new acquaintances at the Aspen conference. That evening, over drinks, she told a small group that she had been arguing with her mentor about the direction of her career. Republican moneymen, she said, had approached her about a Senate run in North Carolina. She was tempted. Petraeus, she said in an irritated tone, rejected the idea out of hand. What was her position, he asked, on abortion? Climate change? Gun control? Gay marriage? Tax cuts? Social Security vouchers? Her answers, he told her, would not fit either party, and she should not sell herself out.

Now, far be it for us to say how competent a senator Paula Broadwell would have been. She probably would have been super-competent, since she seems like a manically focused person! And, seen from a certain light and ignoring the rabbithole of Petraeus obsession/monomania she’d fallen down in the last few years, her resume looks pretty good — military service, intense practical and academic study of terrorism and counterterrorism, etc.

But! From as near as we can tell about her work on Petraeus, she seems to be quite the disciple of capital-L Leadership as a solution to all of our problems, an attitude she is definitely not alone in holding. What Washington needs is not specific solutions to actual problems that balance the needs of various constituencies, but Strong Leadership, which will Get Things Done. Petraeus, in this third-hand retelling, seems to have been extremely sensible, reminding his protege/sex partner that she would have to have opinions on all sorts of non-Leadership things; plus (if we are interpreting “would not fit either party” correctly), she was probably a bazillion times too liberal to win a Republican primary in North Carolina. But mainly it just seems kind of telling that someone wanted to be senator and then got mad because her mentor/love interest said “Hmm, so you want to run for political office, let’s talk about the political views you hold, shall we?” Leadership is a process! Everything else is just content.

So, too bad, no Senator Broadwell for us! Plus there’s the small factor that neither of the current North Carolina senators are up for election until 2014. (Similar scheduling problems prevent either or both of the Kelley twins for running for Florida senate until 2016.) Still, Broadwell has been received warmly by her neighbors/potential constituents in her North Carolina home town, which just reinforces the Daily Beast’s insane proclamation, based on two examples, that her neighborhood is Mistressville, U.S.A. [Time]