Scott McClellan's Sheltered Life

His belated discovery that the Bush Administration was a "permanent campaign" reflects the naiveté of a young man who started out managing his mother's campaign for Texas Comptroller and spent the rest of his working life inside the Bush bubble.

"A president-elect," Scott McClellan writes in his book, "should insist that those overseeing his transition into office learn about the permanent campaign--what it is, how it works, and the consequences of embracing it. A president-elect should also insist that his senior staff heed the same lessons.

"This could enable new administrations to avoid some of the pitfalls the Bush administration fell into, such as taking a massive campaign apparatus into the governing structure of the White House--a particularly dangerous mistake when there is no strong, counterbalancing force in place."

Say what? Some of us have been pointing out for years that Bush was the first American president who had no interest in running the country, just running for office.

Stooping to self-quotation, here is my post of November 4, 2006 headed "RIP: President Pitchman":

"The joy will go out of George W. Bush’s life on November 8, 2006. Whether or not Republicans hold on to Congress, Bush’s loss will be irreparable. He will no longer have what gives his existence meaning.

"Before Monicagate, Maureen Dowd nailed Bill Clinton as 'the only President who is still social-climbing,' a capsule for his combination of ambition, neediness and guile.

"Bush is the only President who never stopped campaigning and started governing.

"After November 7th, he will lose that. Karl Rove & Company may still provide reruns of his favorite milieu: hand-picked cheering crowds and brainless banners, catch phrases to demonize Democrats, self-satisfied smiles belaboring the obvious (9/11 changed the world) and twisting it to his needs (tear up the Constitution to get the terrorists).

"But the real thrill will be gone--persuading voters to part with their rights as easily as carnival barkers sold elixirs to clueless rubes. Bush will be left only with press conferences to smirk uncomfortably at reporters asking about real issues. As always, he will have no answers, only nostrums.

"R.I.P, President Pitchman."

Scott McClellan really should have gotten out of the White House more.

A Brief History of Presidential Snitches

Scott McClellan has stirred a hornet's nest, not only among former Bush colleagues but journalists and political observers as well.

"Turncoat Time" is the head for Washington Post media critic's roundup of reactions including his own:

"Now he tells us? McClellan had deep qualms about Bush using propaganda to sell the Iraq war, about being misled on Valerie Plame, about the president being in denial on Hurricane Katrina, and he utters not a peep of public protest until he's ready to sell his book?...

"What's fascinating is that the conservative commentators who always sided with McClellan against the media mob are now denouncing him as a second-rate Benedict Arnold, while the liberal pundits who always ridiculed McClellan are hailing his belated truth-telling (while still ripping him as a sellout)."

Not fascinating, just predictable, but how much do we have a right to know about the inner workings of a White House and, perhaps more important, when?

In 1962, when Ike's former speech writer Emmet Hughes wrote a tell-all book about his Eisenhower days, John F. Kennedy was appalled.

According to Ted Sorensen, Kennedy thought Hughes "had betrayed the trust of Republican officials by quoting their private conversations against them" and told his White House staff, "I hope no one around here is writing that kind of book."

Sorensen didn't and was scolded by some reviewers for his reticence, but others did and made headlines. This month, almost 50 years later, in a 556-page memoir, Sorensen still isn't dishing any dirt.

No Scott McClellan, he. But Kennedy's counselor was not working for a president who consistently lied in public and took his country into an unnecessary war with those lies.

If he had been, as someone who knows Sorensen's character first-hand, I am sure he would have resigned and gone public with what he knew, as McClellan and so many others who knew more, like Colin Powell, did not.

Loyalty is a virtue in a public man, but the question McClellan raises is loyalty to whom--the occupant of the Oval Office or the people who put him there. If he had spoken out three years sooner, they might be putting up statues of Bush's former press secretary. As it is, he'll have only his reviews and royalties to warm him on the long winter nights ahead.

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 Slo-Mo Conscience

In his new book, Bush's former Press Secretary reveals his boss was not “open and forthright on Iraq,” took a “permanent campaign approach” to governing at the expense of candor and competence and that some of his own statements in the White House briefing room podium were “badly misguided.”

For someone whose job it was to control information, Scott McClellan is not very good at it. It's encouraging that he is blowing the whistle on the Bush Administration, but his lips have been pursed for more than six months when his publisher leaked an excerpt last November:

"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."

The next day McClellan's publisher explained 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."

This week, advance copies of the book were given to selected reporters with an embargo on news from it until next Sunday, but Politico is spilling the beans tonight from a copy bought in a bookstore.

Now, McClellan will make a lot of money from royalties and lectures, but the question arises: Why did he wait to tell the truth until it was profitable for him to do so instead of quitting his job and going public when it might have helped save lives in Iraq and disempower some of the liars he was working with?

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.