Kevin Drum (and God knows, everyone else) are going on about the George Tenet non-event (link), in which the former CIA director proves once again that you shouldn't run with wolves if you pee like a puppy. In Kevin's case, the focus falls in particular on the Medal of Freedom, as in "just for a handful of silver he left us..."--Tenet's artless and ultimately pathetic fixation on the Bushy bauble.
What Tenet seems never to have grasped was that he would have a thousand times better chance of getting good notice in the history books if he had refused the Medal than he did by taking it. Wiki's list of notable recipients includes, what, 100 names (link). And I'll bet even the most devoted trivia maven will have trouble identifying more than two thirds of these. And these are the notables. By refusing, he might even have made us forget "slam dunk."
Fn.: I should add that, reading the early out-takes, I suspect that Tenet may actually have the better of on the issue of slam dunk (but recall that his principal adversary here is Bob Woodward, and don't get me started on him). But nobody cares, or will care for more than one news cycle. Now, refusing the medal...
Fn2: Recall Hitler's generals, with their tropical rainforest of decorations. As I recall, Hitler liked to appear among them with no medals at all.
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