David Petraeus as Secretary of State?

Mitt Romney has been much talked about as a potential Secretary of State in the impending Trump administration.  (They had dinner together this evening.)

But there are others who are apparently also being considered.  One of them is former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani.  He was an excellent mayor, and behaved downright heroically on 9-11.  Moreover, he was a fiercely partisan supporter of Mr. Trump’s presidential candidacy.  But his qualifications for being named America’s top diplomat are, to me, just a bit obscure.  I think he would make an excellent Secretary of Homeland Security.

John Bolton’s credentials are much more obvious, including his stint at American ambassador to the United Nations.

But I want to comment briefly on David Petraeus as the possible head of the Department of State:

He would bring a formidable background to the office.  One of the most successful combat generals in American history (including a highly successful assignment in Iraq, from which he was probably recalled too early), he also holds a Ph.D. in international relations from the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University.  He knows the world well, both theoretically and practically.

I thought so highly of General Petraeus, in fact, that he was one of my dream candidates, back in early 2012, to serve as Mitt Romney’s vice presidential running mate.

There’ve been some developments since then, though.  He’s the first director of Central Intelligence, for example, who’s ever been obliged to step down from that office for reasons of misconduct.

Now, I doubt that his publicly-admitted adultery will disqualify him from serving in, of all things, a Donald Trump administration.

But his guilty plea to a misdemeanor charge of leaking secret documents can’t be brushed so easily aside.  I personally think that General Petraeus’s remarkable skills should be harnessed again for public service.  But it would be very difficult to altogether overlook his carelessness with secret state documents after all of the (justified) outrage against Hillary Clinton for being casual about, exactly, secret state documents while she was, precisely, Secretary of State.  Of course, Mr. Trump, whose vows to prosecute Mrs. Clinton and send her to jail over that issue were red meat for his base during the presidential campaign, is now backing away from such statements:

http://www.newsweek.com/donald-trump-new-york-times-meeting-clinton-climate-change-524140