Punditry is the perfect career those who were once connected and are now the periphery. It's the perfect set-up. You can be both the unnamed source close to the administration or investigation and, at the same time, the brilliant analyst who comments on the info provided by the source. That gives a small story legs, then more media starts citing the stories, they start citing each other, and voila, a single wishful thought or musing, initiated purely for self-serving career reasons, has mushroomed into "consensus" or "common knowledge." An informational Ponzi scheme. Kristol, imho, has a dog in this hunt.