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Scott McClellan’s Mea Culpa — How The White House is Shooting the Messenger |
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As noted earlier on this site by Chris Edelson, Scott McClellan, Bush’s former press secretary has come out with the first real critical book about the Bush Administration from a true Bush insider, and the result is a surprise in that it has emerged from an insular, paranoid, ultra-political White House. If the excerpts are accurate, the picture that emerges from McClellan’s book, What Happened: Inside the Bush White House and Washington’s Culture of Deception, is of an insular, paranoid, ultra-political White House.
Chris has mentioned the excerpts that concern the deceptions about the Iraq War, and understandably asks why McClellan didn’t resign if he felt the way that he did. But other pieces are equally disturbing. The fact that the White House operated in “permanent campaign” mode is not surprising, but the rationale that McClellan gives to this ethos of governing is interesting — Bush wanted to avoid his father’s fate, that of losing his reelection, thus the Bush Administration adopted the stance of a “permanent campaign.”
[The Permanent Campaign was] all about manipulating sources of public opinion to the president’s advantage… Presidential initiatives from health care programs to foreign invasions are regularly devised, named, timed and launched with one eye (or both eyes) on the electoral calendar.”
Now to be fair, the permanent campaign is nothing new in the White House, as the concept has been around since the 1970s. The difference in this Administration is that politics was the primary concern, not an aspect of consideration. This led to decisions by the President that were based on electoral math and rewarding supporters over what was actually good policy. This also meant that the actual decision-making process and real intents had to be hidden:
[The Permanent Campaign was] all about manipulating sources of public opinion to the president’s advantage,” McClellan writes in a book stunning for its harsh criticism of Bush. “Presidential initiatives from health care programs to foreign invasions are regularly devised, named, timed and launched with one eye (or both eyes) on the electoral calendar.”
The truth is that nothing of substance in the book is surprising. The surprise is the source — a real Bush loyalist who was with him when he was Governor of Texas. He describes how Bush was intellectually incurious and would rather convince himself of the politically expedient than face hard truths. While McClellan excuses Bush of the worst malfeasances — Rove, Libby and Cheney are considered to be the ones who knew the truth but deliberately misled Bush so that he would follow their directives, Bush seems to have wanted to be misled — a form of plausible deniability.
But when it comes to the Katrina disaster, McClellan’s indictment is one of incompetence and arrogance:
Many within the White House were in denial about the administration’s responsibility for Katrina…we largely ignored the fact that the federal government was the vital backup, the fail-safe mechanism supposed to compensate for breakdowns at the lower levels. When you’re president, the buck stops with you — a lesson George W. Bush still hadn’t fully absorbed.
There are many lessons that this Administration has not only failed to learn, but has willfully ignored or dismissed. The concept of taking responsibility for mistakes and failures is a small one, but it is clear one tactic that they still hold dear is to attack the messenger. The White House and its Republican cronies have decided that McClellan, a loyal Bushie, is trying to pay back the Administration for making him hang out to dry on Katrina and the Plame case. The attacks now seem to take three forms:
- McClellan was disgruntled McClellan never raised any objections while he worked in the White House as both Deputy Press Secretary and as the main guy. Current Press Secretary, Dana Perino, remarked, “Scott, we now know, is disgruntled about his experience at the White House. For those of us who fully supported him, before, during and after he was press secretary, we are puzzled. It is sad. This is not the Scott we knew.†He was forced out, didn’t like how he was treated and now is exacting his revenge. The lines “I am puzzled,” and “This is not the Scott we knew” seem to be the White House talking points that every flack says on every news program — this alone reinforces the point that McClellan makes about how insular the Bush White House is.
- McClellan was an awful Press Secretary The non-White House Republican talking heads are going on various news programs to make this point. He was in over his head and could not battle the press in the briefing room. This is actually true — McClellan was a bad Press Secretary as he just repeated the same talking points over and over, was not smooth, and sometimes did not understand the greater dynamics of what was going on. Yet he was Press Secretary for two years. My guess is that either they wanted to keep McClellan because he could be controlled, or that they didn’t care enough about the relationship with the press to put a really good, competent person in the job. When Bush’s ratings dove, especially after Katrina, McClellan was finally replaced by a very competent guy, Tony Snow, who knew how to parry with the press. But if McClellan was incompetent and stayed in his job, that is an indictment, along with all the other Michael Browns in the Administration, of what exactly qualified a person for a job in the Bush executive branch.
- McClellan did not have the access to know what the President really was thinking This is the weakest of all as not only was McClellan personally close to Bush, but he was there in many meetings and could see how Bush’s mind worked as well as how others presented the facts to him. Former White House Counselor Dan Bartlett is going around to all the news shows making this point, trying to spin the tale that the President was very reflective and considered all options. Yeah — right. Just remember that briefing he got on Katrina on the video phone where he listened for 45 minutes and didn’t ask a single question. The evidence is on McClellan’s side on this.
But one thing that this Administration does well is shoot the messenger. The problem for them this time, however, is that since there is nothing that is a surprise in the book — rather it is finally an insider’s corroboration of what we all know — it makes it hard for the Administration to dismiss it. What Bush should start to understand is that this is just the beginning of the historical record and historical judgment that will show that this Administration is one of the most incompetent and most harmful in the echelon of American presidencies. But instead they will vilify the President’s former close friend and employee.
