The Higher Loyalty

Bill Bennett goes off on Latimer:

The lowest circle of hell are for people who are disloyal in the way this guy is disloyal and the very lowest point Satan chews on their bodies. Maybe Scott McClellan will chew on this guy’s leg in the after life. So creepy and so disgusting.

Oh the visuals! Friedersdorf tackles the substance of Bennett's point:

[I]nsofar as an administration must work as a team toward common ends, its employees should be loyal so long as they are working under the president. But once their job ends and especially once the president leaves office maintaining loyalty for its own sake does nothing for the country, whereas forthrightly giving a behind-the-scenes account serves two ends: 1) it affords history a fuller picture of a president’s tenure; 2) it reveals mistakes and shortcomings that can be avoided by future administrations that learn from the past. Why would anyone value the loyalty that is supposedly owed a former boss over those significant public goods?