The Evolution of Scott McClellan

Posted by Enrique on 06.05.2008

Former Bush administration shill Scott McClellan has a new book out in which he throws Dubya under the bus. Apparently, the big news McClellan couldn’t keep secret any longer is that – wait for it – Bush is a cynical, duplicitous fraud. Who knew? Unfortunately, based on early reports, it appears McClellan also has a nuanced relationship with honesty.



You may be familiar with Scott McClellan. He was President Bush's press secretary from 2003-2006. McClellan was notable for his uncanny inability to inspire confidence – this was a man obviously out of his depth. McClellan has a new book out called "What Happened: Inside the Bush White House and Washington's Culture of Deception," in which he recounts his days as a member of the Bush administration (Amazon's #1 book as of this writing). In a shocking betrayal, McClellan basically gives Bush the finger, and accuses the current POTUS of incompetence and dishonesty. And would you know it – some elements of the MSM that loathed him as press secretary are now treating McClellan's word as gospel. Funny how that happens.



The story so far…

I was never a fan of McClellan, even back in the days when I still carried water for Bush. Compared to Bush's other press secretaries, McClellan was a spectacular mediocrity. Ari Fleischer seemed professional enough, even likable at times. Tony Snow was a goddamned rock star. When I think about that one time Snow basically accused Helen Thomas of being a Hezbollah sympathizer, it still brings a smile to my face. As for the current press secretary, Dana Perino, I just feel sorry for her. She does a perfectly fine job, but she's obviously aware that the world hates her boss, so she's got this permanent "Calgon, take me away" look about her.

McClellan was never really cut out for the job. Most articles you read about McClellan's years as White House flack feature some variation of "deer in the headlights." However, McClellan's earned some newfound respect from the press corps thanks to his tell-all book. I haven't read the book myself, but that doesn't mean I don't have an opinion about it. Never let ignorance stop you from acting like you know what you're talking about, I always say.

Someone who actually has read the book is reporter Mike Allen. Writing in Politico.com, Allen recounts some of McClellan's sensational revelations:

• McClellan charges that Bush relied on "propaganda" to sell the [Iraq] war.

• He says the White House press corps was too easy on the administration during the run-up to the war.

• He admits that some of his own assertions from the briefing room podium turned out to be "badly misguided."

• The longtime Bush loyalist also suggests that two top aides held a secret West Wing meeting to get their story straight about the CIA leak case at a time when federal prosecutors were after them — and McClellan was continuing to defend them despite mounting evidence they had not given him all the facts.

• McClellan asserts that the aides — Karl Rove, the president's senior adviser, and I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, the vice president's chief of staff — "had at best misled" him about their role in the disclosure of former CIA operative Valerie Plame's identity.

I feel like I've heard those charges before. Still, the standard anti-Bush talking points mean more coming from a member of Bush's inner circle than they do from your average lefty. And you don't get much more "inner circle" than McClellan – along with Karl Rove, Karen Hughes, Harriet Miers et al., McClellan had followed Bush from Texas to Washington. He got his job based on loyalty more than qualification (a running theme of the Bush administration). With good reason, the media never took McClellan all that seriously.

But it's amazing how telling someone what he/she wants to hear can enhance his/her opinion of you. Last week, McClellan gave a 50-minute interview to erstwhile critic Keith Olbermann on MSNBC's popular "Countdown" program:


"The book by former White House press secretary, Scott McClellan, perhaps the most extraordinary collection of revelations about a sitting president since John Dean was sworn in before the Irving committee in 1973, continues today to make the metaphorical ground beneath the Bush White House shudder…in reading, so far, about half of this book, it seems it is the Rosetta Stone for understanding the last seven years of American history…there is, I think, actual poetry in here, and I don't mean to vainly flatter you here…I'm very impressed with it and I think at some point, people will be teaching history classes based on it."

My dear lefty readers – are you kidding me? This is your idea of a serious, "speak truth to power" journalist? The second coming of Edward R. Murrow and all that? You really have to read the whole transcript to appreciate the fawning, uncritical tone Olbermann takes with McClellan. It's filled with such hard-hitting questions as "Have you been surprised that most of the criticism has been personal, as opposed to say, refuting facts that perhaps you got right and nobody wants to talk about that?" I'd make a fellatio joke here, but that's too obvious, even by my standards.

In fairness, Olbermann almost makes a good point that some critics of McClellan are simply refusing to confront the charges he makes in his book. I say "almost" because if Olbermann could be bothered to do some research, he'd find that there are many people refuting McClellan's "facts." For example, Robert Novak:

Although the media response has dwelled on McClellan's criticism of Bush's road to war, the CIA leak case is the heart of this book. On July 14, 2003, one day before McClellan took a press secretary's job for which many colleagues felt he was unqualified, I wrote a column asserting that while at the CIA Plame had suggested her Democratic partisan husband, retired diplomat Joseph Wilson, for a sensitive intelligence mission. That story would make McClellan's three years at the briefing room podium a misery, leading to his dismissal and now his bitter retort.

In claiming he was misled about the Plame affair, McClellan mentions Armitage only twice. Armitage being the leaker undermines the Democratic theory, now accepted by McClellan, that Bush, Vice President Cheney and political adviser Karl Rove aimed to delegitimize Wilson as a war critic. The way that McClellan handles the leak leads former colleagues to suggest he could not have written this book by himself.

Ooooh, that's some tasty red meat. To refresh your memory, there was some hoopla a few years ago about whether or not the Bush administration had broken any laws by revealing the identity of CIA operative Valerie Plame. Special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald didn't indict anti-war State Department flunky Richard Armitage for the Plame leak, although he did charge Scooter Libby with having a bad memory, in one of the more transparent railroadings in U.S. history. Of course, some folks like to forget that Armitage was the leaker, so it's certainly convenient for McClellan to play along with the left's Plame kabuki now that he's got a book to sell.

Novak's not the only McClellan skeptic – other MSM journalists have questioned how much input McClellan had in the development of his own book. Politico reports that McClellan's initial book proposal was a softer pitch that spared Bush from scathing criticism. The Washington Post has been similarly skeptical of McClellan's sincerity:

McClellan and Peter Osnos, the founder of PublicAffairs, the small company that published "What Happened," rebutted suggestions from some Bush defenders, including former press secretary Ari Fleischer, that McClellan may have had a ghostwriter or undergone heavy-handed editing. Fleischer and others have repeatedly said that the book does not "sound like" McClellan, who is known as genial and soft-spoken.

McClellan said that he started focusing on writing the book about a year ago and that the work was especially intense over the past several months as the publishing date approached.

Osnos said McClellan just needed editorial guidance to tell the story he wanted to tell all along.

Editorial guidance, indeed. All the same, as Peggy Noonan notes, the real question isn't whether McClellan sexed up his book for mass appeal. The real question is, "is it true?"

As I said, I haven't read the book. But based on reports, it would seem that McClellan is giving the market what it wants. He doesn't do himself any favors by skirting the Armitage-Plame connection, but his main point – that Bush has never felt the need to adequately explain his most controversial acts as President – is manifestly true. That said, we know this much – McClellan is either a dupe or a liar. Can you imagine hiring such a buffoon to be your spokesman? If you did, it certainly wouldn't indicate good judgment.