Heckuva job, Scotty: McClellan writes a book
posted at 7:38 am on May 28, 2008 by Ed Morrissey
Former White House press secretary Scott McClellan has written a memoir of his experiences — and the political punditry has already started feasting at the appetizers. Politico's Mike Allen gives an exclusive preview of the newest must-read, which dishes on the Bush administration and attempts to distance McClellan from its more notable controversies. Unfortunately, if Allen has properly represented it, one has to wonder why McClellan stuck around as long as he did:
.................McClellan says he still admires Bush, but thinks that his advisers served him very poorly, especially in the war. That will certainly gain a lot of attention, but it also calls into question why McClellan stuck around for three years of dealing "propaganda". As Kathryn Jean Lopez notes, the honorable action would have been to resign for a press secretary who feels he or she has been told to lie. One White House insider has already stated that McClellan didn't object during any of the meetings she attended or make his dissent known within the West Wing.
Furthermore, why wait for two years to reveal this? Obviously it makes his book a hot commodity, but the war started going badly in 2006 after he left the job. Two months earlier, AQI bombed the Golden Mosque and nearly touched off a civil war. Wouldn't that have been a good time to open his mouth, especially with elections approaching that could have had a big impact on the war? Instead, McClellan waited until the war was almost over and the Bush administration has all but exited. The advisers he blames no longer work for Bush. What's the point, except to cash out?
Expect all sides to redefine McClellan in order to either boost or reduce his credibility. To the Right, McClellan will have been the worst press secretary of modern times, and to the Left a man of extraordinary ability chased out of his job by Bush's minions. The truth will be somewhere in the middle. When he left office, most people on both sides considered him a mediocrity at best. His status as favored punching bag for the hard Left can best be captured in the Keith Olbermann farewell McClellan received as he exited in April 2006. It will be particularly amusing to watch this fringe try to rehabilitate McClellan now.
We can expect more of these memoirs as the Bush administration comes to a close. The tell-all tome has become its own genre, and with mixed results except for the authors' bank accounts. If the press secretary was that interested in truth, he took an awfully long time to tell it.
hotair.com |
