What we learned from yesterday’s news conference (which isn’t what the president wanted us to learn):

Add up these comments and it seems the president’s second-term foreign policy will not change at all. Never admit error, obfuscate, change the subject, talk and talk and talk, “engage,” and claim all is well. Mr. Obama noted that in Syria the situation has “deteriorated” since he demanded that Assad go — in the summer of 2011. That’s the truest thing he said: There are now 40,000 dead, 400,000 refugees, many more displaced persons, and a really dangerous jihadi presence. As Mr. Obama might say, that’s not optimal — and he remains unable to draw the connection between his own policies and those disastrous developments.

And the great thing is, we now get over four more years of it.

The official government version, like the official government story on Benghazi, makes no sense:

In the modern era, office-holders with forgiving spouses simply do not resign from powerful jobs because of a temporary, non-criminal, consensual adult sexual liaison, as the history of the FDR, Eisenhower, JFK, LBJ, and Clinton presidencies attest. So, why is Petraeus different? Someone wants to silence him.

If there were national security implications to Petraeus’s affair, they existed when it remained unknown, and he wanted to keep it that way. That is when the president should have been informed as soon as Holder knew, not after he’d been outed, and was no longer blackmailable. It’s very simple, really.

But of course, I don’t believe that the president didn’t know from the get go. It’s a shame that no one asked him in the press conference yesterday when he found out.

My question: who will be the John Dean of this administration?

[Update a few minutes later]

Related thoughts from VDH:

…anyone in these circumstances would also be advised that any future testimony had the potential to be at odds with past testimonies and statements, which might argue for a darker scenario in which after the election someone in the administration felt that Petraeus could now safely resign and fade quietly into retirement — all of which makes the role of any future statements by Ms. Broadwell quite dynamic.There are all sorts of different speculations, but the above is perhaps the most generous explanation we are hearing and reading and it must be dispelled by the Congress and administration as quickly as possible. It does no good simply to cry “conspiracy theorist” when these speculations are natural and logical.

There are all sorts of important ramifications: from the proper role of the FBI stealthily examining the private e-mails of top officers, to the issue of what exactly does the FBI do with the results of these probes and who oversees its findings, to the coordination of the State Department, administration, and CIA — and of course, most importantly, the question of why and how did our government put Americans in unsafe conditions, refuse pleas for increased security, not lend assistance in extremis, and then mislead the country about the circumstances of their deaths — and why were so many Americans in Libya in the first place and what were they doing that was worth putting them in such grave danger and from whom?

For some reason, I don’t think that the White House wants us to find that out, even with the election safely behind them.

I wonder if Google has thought this through? I fear that they have.