McClellan's Book: An Unlikely Gift to Obama Campaign
WSJ WASHINGTON WIRE
In Campaign 2008
Amy Chozick reports from Thornton, Colo., on the presidential race.
Former White House press secretary Scott McClellan?s at times scathing new account of the Bush administration comes as music to the ears of the Obama campaign.
McClellan?s new book, "What Happened: Inside the Bush White House and Washington's Culture of Deception," says President Bush relied on an aggressive ?political propaganda campaign? instead of truth to sell the Iraq war.
The claim plays directly into Barack Obama?s message that he is the only remaining presidential candidate who opposed the Iraq war in 2002 and that his likely Republican rival, John McCain would offer ?four more years? of the same ?failed policies? of the Bush administration.
The campaign evoked the book in response to a speech McCain gave in Reno, Nev., Wednesday in which he accused Obama of not understanding foreign policy. ?Sen. Obama has been to Iraq once,? McCain said, further criticizing Obama for holding no oversight hearings from his perch on a key Foreign Relations subcommittee.
The Obama campaign immediately pulled the McClellan book out of its opposition vault. ?On the day after the former White House press secretary conceded that the Bush administration used deception and propaganda to take us to war, it seems odd that Sen. McCain, who bought the flawed rationale for war so readily, would be lecturing others on their depth of understanding about Iraq?Sen. McCain stubbornly insists on pursuing the failed Bush policy that continues to cost so much,? said Obama campaign spokesman Bill Burton.
The McCain campaign says the McClellan book has nothing to do with the policies and politics McCain is proposing.
President Bush?s press secretary Dana Perino said in a statement that McClellan is ?disgruntled about his experience at the White House?It?s sad, it?s not the Scott we knew.?
When asked whether the President will comment on the reports described in the book, Perino said Bush ?has more pressing matters than to spend time commenting on books by former staffers.? |
