David Petraeus running for president, with Fox News chief Roger Ailes as his campaign manager and News Corporation boss Rupert Murdoch “bankrolling” the whole operation. That, as first reported in today’s Washington Post story by Bob Woodward, was the broad strokes of an offer delivered by a Fox News contributor, on Ailes’ behalf, during a meeting with the future, and now former, CIA director in the spring of 2011.

The messenger was Kathleen T. McFarland, a Reagan administration veteran now on the Fox News payroll. She told Petraeus that the proposal came straight from Ailes’ desk.

Petraeus was uncomfortable from the start, clearly anxious about their discussion going public. He asked McFarland to confirm that their conversation was off the record and asked if anyone else was present when Ailes communicated his plan.

She is heard on the tape confirming that it’s all hush-hush.

“He is a little paranoid, so believe me, he doesn’t have anybody in that room,” McFarland says, according to the Post.

The plan, she goes on to explain, was for Petraeus to accept nothing less than the military’s top position — chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Anything else, she said, Petraeus should reject, and then six months later resign and run for president.

But Petraeus wasn’t interested.