Last week, the mainstream media breathlessly reported that President Bush’s former Press Secretary, Scott McClellan, had “slammed”, “walloped”, “stunned” or “blindsided” – pick your cliché – the Bush Administration with the claims he makes in his forthcoming book, What Happened: Inside the Bush White House and Washington’s Culture of Deception.
I have to hand it to him, for someone enjoying his “fifteen minutes of fame,” McClellan has made the most of them. I personally saw him on NBC’s “Today Show”, CNN’s “The Situation Room”, CNN’s “Anderson Cooper 360”, MSNBC’s “Countdown with Keith Olbermann”, CBS’ “CBS Evening News”, ABC’s “World News” and NBC’s “Meet the Press”, and I’m sure there were other appearances I missed and perhaps more yet to come. In watching his various interviews, I came away decidedly unimpressed with him – though in the interest of full disclosure, I always felt he was a horrendous press secretary, so I don’t know why I thought my opinion would change now. I don’t think, though, that my distaste for him and for what he’s done in writing his book can entirely be chalked up to my support for his former boss. In fact, I don’t think McClellan is a particularly popular person anywhere right now – regardless of one’s view of President Bush or general political leanings.
For those few like me who support President Bush, McClellan is a disloyal loser clearly capitalizing (literally) on his powerful former position and on the media’s appetite for blood when it comes to criticism of Bush. McClellan’s no fool, and he knew very well the frenzy his “revelations” would ignite, and surely hoped it would translate into boffo book sales. Given my negative feelings about his work as press secretary, I was never a fan of his, particularly when his incompetence in pushing the White House “message” forward so often occurred during critical times and with regard to critical issues of the Bush Presidency. In today’s non-stop news cycle of the internet and 24 hour cable news networks, a failed messenger was a crippling weakness for the White House. More to the point, though, I have my doubts about the sincerity of his current claims, particularly when he admits that he never once voiced any concerns about what was going on around him to President Bush or anyone else in the White House while they were happening. Further, while he officially resigned, most of Washington and most of the political punditry felt that his resignation was hardly voluntary, particularly when his successor was the far more talented and far more respected Tony Snow. It’s hard to imagine, then, that he wasn’t at least a tad bitter and potentially vengeful too. In my view, his motives are beyond questionable.
On the opposite end are those who despise President Bush or who are vehemently opposed to the U.S. presence in Iraq (or both). Here too lies one of the most ironic aspects of this whole episode, as it was the same liberal crowd now fighting to interview him who once mercilessly hounded him at the White House podium and very openly derided his lame attempts at “spin”. But things have changed, and McClellan has received an entirely different and more positive reaction – at least initially – from the same formerly tough crowd. I think his former boss and predecessor as White House Press Secretary, Ari Fleischer, said it best last week:
“Poor Scott. Scott is about to borrow some friends for 24 hours on the political left, who will throw him out as soon as they are done with him, and he’s burnt an awful lot of bridges to people who really always thought fondly and highly of him.”Fleischer was right on the money. The knee jerk reaction of this camp was to celebrate and praise this brave bastion of truth, epitomized by the hater of all Bush haters, Keith Olbermann, dedicating the entire hour of his show to an interview with McClellan. Already, though, the tone has begun to change, and some on the left have become critical of McClellan for not speaking out sooner – preferably at the very time he had his alleged misgivings and disillusionments. And, they ask, wasn’t he being dishonest himself in his daily promotions of the Bush Administration’s view and policies – view and policies about which we now learn he apparently had very serious concerns? Perhaps Bush could have been impeached, they no doubt imagine, if only he could have blown the whistle earlier. Those primarily focused on Iraq, meanwhile, have taken to wondering how many lives in Iraq could have been saved if McClellan had been able to find his voice sooner, potentially precipitating an end to the war. Regardless of how unlikely either happening as a result of an explosive McClellan resignation several years ago was, it’s obvious that his usefulness to them is already waning, and by the time he appeared on “Meet the Press” Sunday, the distinct feeling that this was old news was hard to deny.
Even though I do remain a Bush supporter, I certainly have my share of disappointments with him and others in his administration. By no means do I feel that the war has been handled as well as it could have or should have been, the Hurricane Katrina episode was deplorable, and the president’s ability to communicate with the American people is fatally flawed. I absolutely have my own questions about those and other decisions made over the last seven years, but I’m not going to write a book about them, and I particularly would not write a book about them if I had spent nearly 10 years working for Bush, first for his election, and then very prominently as a member of his senior staff – particularly not while he is still in office. Perhaps there is an unwritten rule of decorum violated here that upsets me most, even if I do sympathize to some extent with some of the issues that apparently troubled McClellan. Actually, it seems to me that most anyone witnessing this who is able to remove his or her political lens momentarily and observe it from a personal or human perspective can’t help but view McClellan as somewhat sleazy. Everything seems all too convenient, the issues on which he allegedly differed all too fashionable, and his interviews over the last week – much like his erstwhile White House press briefings – all too unconvincing and meek. No one likes a “snitch”, after all, and it’s hard to view McClellan’s book as much more than snitching on a grand scale – and a lucrative one at that. When Bob Dole of all people emerges from retirement to publicly label him a “miserable creature” and “a total ingrate”, I think it’s clear McClellan made an error in judgment, and one from which his reputation and future career prospects are unlikely to ever recover.
(This post can also be seen at Splice Today: http://splicetoday.com/)
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