A Deprogrammer or an Exorcist?

Like any family with a member who has gone off the rails, the Bushies are beside themselves with worry about poor Scott McClellan.

"It's sad," Dana Perino pouts. "This is not the Scott we knew."

"This doesn't sound like Scott," Karl Rove headshakes. "It really doesn't. Not the Scott McClellan I have known for a long time...sounds like somebody else, it sounds like a left-wing blogger."

Ari Fleischer is "heartbroken."

Former White House Counsel Dan Bartlett is dazed. "It's almost like we're witnessing an out-of-body experience," he says. "We're hearing from a completely different person we didn't have any insight into."

Now that McClellan has developed some kind of truth addiction, White House loyalists are holding a public intervention, not sure whether to consult a deprogrammer or an exorcist to bring back the good old lying Scott they used to know.

Rove echoes every family member who has gone through such an experience, wondering if he should have detected some sign of trouble.

"If he had these moral qualms," Rove says, "he should have spoken up about them. And frankly I don't remember him speaking up about these things. I don't remember a single word."

If only they had known, they could have increased the doses of Kool-Aid.

Scott McClellan's Script Tease

Say this much for Dana Perino: She may not be the most scintillating White House press secretary in history but, after writing her memoirs, she won't be performing the verbal strip tease Scott McClellan did this week to get attention for his.

Earlier in this slow news week, his publisher posted 121 words from McClellan's oevre that won't be available until next April:

"The most powerful leader in the world had called upon me to speak on his behalf and help restore credibility he lost amid the failure to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. So I stood at the White house briefing room podium in front of the glare of the klieg lights for the better part of two weeks and publicly exonerated two of the senior-most aides in the White House: Karl Rove and Scooter Libby.

"There was one problem. It was not true.

"I had unknowingly passed along false information. And five of the highest ranking officials in the administration were involved in my doing so: Rove, Libby, the Vice President, the President’s chief of staff, and the President himself."

Most journalists (silly people) took this to mean that George W. Bush was "involved" in lies about Rove and Libby to the press.

But after getting attention with this admission, McClellan's publisher now tells us it all depends on what the meaning of "is" is. Peter Osnos of Public Affairs Books explains that his author "did not intend to suggest Bush lied to him" but told him what "he thought to be the case" and "didn't know it was not true."

Oh. Sounds a lot like the kind of work McClellan used to do from behind the White House podium.

The history of the Bush Administration's downfall can be traced in the arc of attractiveness of its spokespeople. When they were riding high, the media were held at bay by boring dough-faced types like McClellan and Ari Fleischer. Later, when the going got tough, they were replaced by the smoother and better-looking Tony Snow and Perino.

At this rate, Bush and Cheney should scouring Hollywood casting officers for a communications closer.

Blonde Loyalty to Bush

Is there something in the White House water that deprives young women of free will and at the same time lightens their hair color?

The question is raised by Senate testimony today of Sara Taylor, following on recent public performances by Monica Goodling and Deputy Press Secretary Dana Perino.

In answering some and evading other questions by the Judiciary Committee, Ms. Taylor showed a familiar undeviating loyalty to the Bush Administration and its master political chemist Karl Rove while navigating the narrows between perjury and contempt of Congress.

Pressuring the former White House political director, Democrats have a perception problem of their own, the risk of old pols appearing to bully a sincere young woman into betraying her former bosses.

"Having worked most of her adult life for President Bush,” her attorney wrote to the committee beforehand, “she is unquestionably loyal to the president. If there is to be a clash, we urge the Senate to direct its sanction against the White House, not against a former staffer."

It appears that Sen. Leahy et al will get very little help from Ms. Taylor. If they want the truth about the U.S. Attorney firing scandal, it will take a legal battle about executive privilege to get Rove’s testimony under oath.

Meanwhile, watching Ms. Taylor today evokes speculation about how different Paris Hilton’s life might be today if she had applied for a White House internship.