It’s pretty jaw-dropping, alright. Not so much the things Scott McClellan apparently says in his new book, but more the fact that someone who thought this way had the job that he had, and held it for as long as he did. The real indictment of the George W. Bush presidency in all of this is that he allowed himself to be so ill-served for so long by someone who seemingly was on a totally different wavelength. McClellan was always an ineffective White House press secretary, and a weak replacement for Ari Fleischer, who himself wasn’t the most impressive press secretary in history. McClellan was stuck in a defensive tone, and rarely sounded convinced of what he was saying. I guess now we know why.

His criticism of the Bush administration seems to reveal someone who was incredibly naive (or perhaps it just reveals someone who wants more than anything else to be a bestselling author). He says the Bush administration emphasized the weapons of mass destruction argument to take out Saddam Hussein, and hid the other goal of fostering democracy in the Middle East. Well, I wasn’t in on the high level White House meetings that McClellan presumably attended, but I was well aware at the time — just by being your average ordinary news junkie — that there was an entire panoply of reasons for dislodging Saddam Hussein, and I was well aware that the weapons of mass destruction argument was being touted as numero uno because (1) It was an argument that seemed to possess the greatest urgency and the one that seemed (to the administration) to be the easiest to make and (2) It held out the possibility of winning an endorsement of action from the U.N. Security Council. President Bush gambled on his belief that weapons of mass destruction would be found, and he had reason to think it was a very good bet to make, and that his rationale for invasion would be quickly vindicated. Just about everyone thought that, at a minimum, Saddam Hussein possessed some stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons. American troops didn’t go into battle burdened with heavy chemical protective suits for nothing. It’s still unclear whether Saddam himself might have believed he had such materials, or whether he wanted to maintain that impression to intimidate his neighbors. President Bush lost the gamble, obviously, and history will judge how that tarnishes his presidency, based largely on how well other goals in Iraq are achieved. But McClellan is not exactly revealing news on these issues with his book, although he seems to be revealing a continuing inability to understand the history he lived through.

McClellan also faults the Bush administration for falling into a “permanent campaign” mode. It kind of makes you wonder where McClellan was during the Clinton administration. The permanent campaign is now a permanent part of American politics. I don’t put the blame, as such, on the Clintons, although it seems to have originated with them. The blame must also go to the atmosphere created by a hyped-up 24-hour news media. All of Washington is in permanent campaign mode (have Bush’s opponents, from Tom Daschle to Nancy Pelosi, ever slowed down or pulled their punches?). The truth now is that if a president is not in some sense campaigning for something at any given time, then he or she will quickly be drowned out by critics and seem to fade into irrelevance. I think most of President Bush’s supporters have not been bothered as much by a permanent campaign mode as they have been bothered by its lack of efficacy, or it being focused at times on the wrong issues, or it being led by such unconvincing spokespeople as Scott McClellan.

McClellan writes of being misled, or of being unhappy to be providing an incomplete picture to the press corps during his time at the White House podium. And no doubt there were times when he should have been sent to the podium with a better message, or with more complete information. It was surely part of his job in those circumstances to demand better information, or to make an argument as to why the administration’s message ought to be crafted differently. I mean, he was the White House press secretary — not just a spokes-model pushing a new cosmetic. He should have been an integral part of deciding how to communicate with the American people via the White House press corps. Perhaps, had he been better at this job, he would be more satisfied and less resentful today, and the Bush administration would have achieved more policy success during this second term. Or, it may be that had he insisted on doing things differently in specific instances, he would have been laughed out of the room. If so, he would have had justification for resigning, and his book would perhaps seem more the work of a conscientious objector, and not appear so glaringly instead to be the poisoned product of a snake in the grass.

...................
Share this!

Posts which might be related to this one based on a mysterious algorithm:

• Thank heaven
• Prayer for Tony Snow
• Bull’s Eye
• Peas in a pod