Proof of this dismal state of affairs came this week with the publication of a supportive profile of University of Chicago professor John Mearsheimer in The Atlantic Monthly written by the magazine's in-house foreign policy guru Robert Kaplan.
"At that point, he could dictate the rules and the rules were that it was off the record, " says Martha Joynt Kumar, professor of political science at Towson University and author of Managing the President's Message: The White House Communication Operation.