Did Robert Gibbs Telegraph Mercy for McChrystal?

For the first half of today’s White House briefing, Robert Gibbs was a bundle of barely retrained disgust and anger, as he fielded questions about Gen. Stanley McChrystal‘s disastrous Rolling Stone interview. Since the McChrystal horse was in a post-mortem heap by the time he got around to me, I thought I might be able to draw a reaction out of Gibbs with a carefully executed question. While that didn’t quite work out, in retrospect, Gibbs may have signaled a surprise ending to tomorrow’s McChrystal-Obama tete a tete.

Had I been able to finish my question, I was going to observe that Gibbs’ anger seemed to peak when he spoke about our troops deserving better than petty, ego-driven politics, his voice audibly cracking. It was a theme he revisited several times.

The rest of Gibbs’ responses seemed designed to instill the maximum amount of fear in the loose-lipped General, and with good reason. Unless McChrystal has some incredible defense to mount (not likely, given reports he has already offered his resignation), the kind of insubordination displayed in that article is intolerable. As Gibbs said, it’s not about ego or petty differences, but about successfully executing a military strategy, which General McChrystal undermined.

On the other hand, the President has been very supportive of McChrystal’s Afghanistan strategy, and it’s nearly impossible that he would abandon it now. Since the counterinsurgency strategy is McChrystal’s baby, the risk in having him hand it off might greatly outweigh the harm of retaining the Runaway General. Obama could very well decide to zig, showing mercy where other presidents have not.

A lot of this might depend on how tomorrow’s meeting goes. If the President thinks the relationship can be salvaged, it is well within his MO to be the bigger man, and put the mission in Afghanistan ahead of his own bruised ego and authoritah.

This is an opinion piece. The views expressed in this article are those of just the author.