Video: For White House, Petraeus affair distracts

>>> let's talk about the fallout thus far from all of this. we're joined from washington with chuck todd and retired army colonel and recipient of the medal of honor , jack jacobs . let's talk about generals beginning with petraeus , americans could name a handful of generals with the exception of curtis lemay and your commander in vietnam westmoreland since then. tell me about the impact on the military, any fault the military may have in the system?

>> well, we have a large number of general officers , admirals, flag officers , lots and lots of them. as a result, somebody like petraeus who is skilled shines above all others. but in order to have lots and lots of generals, the law of large numbers says that some of them are not going to be good, and the supervision of their rise and their nomination is not always the best. it's easy to take your eyes off the bubble, and as a result, you have a circumstance like this, it's very troubling, although i have to say that the rank and file of the military is strongly in favor of good people continuing to command no matter what the results of an investigation like this.

>> chuck todd over to you, and politics, and what may be unanswerable in terms of the time line in a hypothetical. what if this had come out during the election campaign ?

>> it's something that the political team here at the white house is glad they didn't have to test that hypothetical. i can tell you for now, they feel as if the political fallout is a distraction. president has a press conference tomorrow. the first one since winning re-election. it's going to be dominated by the petraeus scandal, by the fact that there seems to be a lot of unanswered questions. what took the fbi so long in notifying the white house , things like that. the president would rather be focused on the fiscal cliff negotiations. what are we going to do by the end of the year. the deadlines don't go away. but politically, they believe they're insulated here, because petraeus isn't considered an obama guy. if anything, he's more of a republican guy at the end of the day .

Source: http://video.msnbc.msn.com/nightly-news/49812908/

49ers vs giants giants vs 49ers san francisco 49ers san francisco 49ers sf 49ers joe paterno died 49ers game