http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0508/10649.html Exclusive: McClellan whacks Bush, White House Former White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan writes in a surprisingly scathing memoir to be published next week that President Bush “veered terribly off course,” was not “open and forthright on Iraq,” and took a “permanent campaign approach” to governing at the expense of candor and competence. Among the most explosive revelations in the 341-page book, titled “What Happened: Inside the Bush White House and Washington’s Culture of Deception” (Public Affairs, $27.95): • McClellan charges that Bush relied on “propaganda” to sell the war. • He says the White House press corps was too easy on the administration during the run-up to the war. • He admits that some of his own assertions from the briefing room podium turned out to be “badly misguided.” • The longtime Bush loyalist also suggests that two top aides held a secret West Wing meeting to get their story straight about the CIA leak case at a time when federal prosecutors were after them — and McClellan was continuing to defend them despite mounting evidence they had not given him all the facts. • McClellan asserts that the aides — Karl Rove, the president’s senior adviser, and I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, the vice president’s chief of staff — “had at best misled” him about their role in the disclosure of former CIA operative Valerie Plame’s identity. A few reporters were offered advance copies of the book, with the restriction that their stories not appear until Sunday, the day before the official publication date. Politico declined and purchased “What Happened” at a Washington bookstore. The eagerly awaited book, while recounting many fond memories of Bush and describing him as “authentic” and “sincere,” is harsher than reporters and White House officials had expected. McClellan was one of the president’s earliest and most loyal political aides, and most of his friends had expected him to take a few swipes at his former colleague in order to sell books but also to paint a largely affectionate portrait. Instead, McClellan’s tone is often harsh. He writes, for example, that after Hurricane Katrina, the White House “spent most of the first week in a state of denial,” and he blames Rove for suggesting the photo of the president comfortably observing the disaster during an Air Force One flyover. McClellan says he and counselor to the president Dan Bartlett had opposed the idea and thought it had been scrapped. But he writes that he later was told that “Karl was convinced we needed to do it — and the president agreed.” “One of the worst disasters in our nation’s history became one of the biggest disasters in Bush’s presidency. Katrina and the botched federal response to it would largely come to define Bush’s second term,” he writes. “And the perception of this catastrophe was made worse by previous decisions President Bush had made, including, first and foremost, the failure to be open and forthright on Iraq and rushing to war with inadequate planning and preparation for its aftermath.” McClellan, who turned 40 in February, was press secretary from July 2003 to April 2006. An Austin native from a political family, he began working as a gubernatorial spokesman for then-Gov. Bush in early 1999, was traveling press secretary for the Bush-Cheney 2000 campaign and was chief deputy to Press Secretary Ari Fleischer at the beginning of Bush’s first term. “I still like and admire President Bush,” McClellan writes. “But he and his advisers confused the propaganda campaign with the high level of candor and honesty so fundamentally needed to build and then sustain public support during a time of war. … In this regard, he was terribly ill-served by his top advisers, especially those involved directly in national security.” In a small sign of how thoroughly McClellan has adopted the outsider’s role, he refers at times to his former boss as “Bush,” when he is universally referred to by insiders as “the president.” McClellan lost some of his former friends in the administration last November when his publisher released an excerpt from the book that appeared to accuse Bush of participating in the cover-up of the Plame leak. The book, however, makes clear that McClellan believes Bush was also a victim of misinformation. The book begins with McClellan’s statement to the press that he had talked with Rove and Libby and that they had assured him they “were not involved in … the leaking of classified information.” At Libby’s trial, testimony showed the two had talked with reporters about the officer, however elliptically. “I had allowed myself to be deceived into unknowingly passing along a falsehood,” McClellan writes. “It would ultimately prove fatal to my ability to serve the president effectively. I didn’t learn that what I’d said was untrue until the media began to figure it out almost two years later. “Neither, I believe, did President Bush. He, too, had been deceived and therefore became unwittingly involved in deceiving me. But the top White House officials who knew the truth — including Rove, Libby and possibly Vice President Cheney — allowed me, even encouraged me, to repeat a lie.” McClellan also suggests that Libby and Rove secretly colluded to get their stories straight at a time when federal investigators were hot on the Plame case. “There is only one moment during the leak episode that I am reluctant to discuss,” he writes. “It was in 2005, during a time when attention was focusing on Rove and Libby, and it sticks vividly in my mind. … Following [a meeting in Chief of Staff Andy Card’s office], … Scooter Libby was walking to the entryway as he prepared to depart when Karl turned to get his attention. ‘You have time to visit?’ Karl asked. ‘Yeah,’ replied Libby. “I have no idea what they discussed, but it seemed suspicious for these two, whom I had never noticed spending any one-on-one time together, to go behind closed doors and visit privately. … At least one of them, Rove, it was publicly known at the time, had at best misled me by not sharing relevant information, and credible rumors were spreading that the other, Libby, had done at least as much. … “The confidential meeting also occurred at a moment when I was being battered by the press for publicly vouching for the two by claiming they were not involved in leaking Plame’s identity, when recently revealed information was now indicating otherwise. … I don’t know what they discussed, but what would any knowledgeable person reasonably and logically conclude was the topic? Like the whole truth of people’s involvement, we will likely never know with any degree of confidence.” McClellan repeatedly embraces the rhetoric of Bush's liberal critics and even charges: “If anything, the national press corps was probably too deferential to the White House and to the administration in regard to the most important decision facing the nation during my years in Washington, the choice over whether to go to war in Iraq. “The collapse of the administration’s rationales for war, which became apparent months after our invasion, should never have come as such a surprise. … In this case, the ‘liberal media’ didn’t live up to its reputation. If it had, the country would have been better served.” Decrying the Bush administration’s “excessive embrace of the permanent campaign approach to governance,” McClellan recommends that future presidents appoint a “deputy chief of staff for governing” who “would be responsible for making sure the president is continually and consistently committed to a high level of openness and forthrightness and transcending partisanship to achieve unity. “I frequently stumbled along the way,” McClellan acknowledges in the book’s preface. “My own story, however, is of small importance in the broad historical picture. More significant is the larger story in which I played a minor role: the story of how the presidency of George W. Bush veered terribly off course.” Even some of the chapter titles are brutal: “The Permanent Campaign,” “Deniability,” “Triumph and Illusion,” “Revelation and Humiliation” and “Out of Touch.” “I think the concern about liberal bias helps to explain the tendency of the Bush team to build walls against the media,” McClellan writes in a chapter in which he says he dealt “happily enough” with liberal reporters. “Unfortunately, the press secretary at times found himself outside those walls as well.” The book’s center has eight slick pages with 19 photos, eight of them depicting McClellan with the president. Those making cameos include Cheney, Rove, Bartlett, Mark Knoller of CBS News, former Assistant Press Secretary Reed Dickens and, aboard Air Force One, former press office official Peter Watkins and former White House stenographer Greg North. In the acknowledgments, McClellan thanks each member of his former staff by name. Among other notable passages: • Steve Hadley, then the deputy national security adviser, said about the erroneous assertion about Saddam Hussein seeking uranium, included in the State of the Union address of 2003: “Signing off on these facts is my responsibility. … And in this case, I blew it. I think the only solution is for me to resign.” The offer “was rejected almost out of hand by others present,” McClellan writes. • Bush was “clearly irritated, … steamed,” when McClellan informed him that chief economic adviser Larry Lindsey had told The Wall Street Journal that a possible war in Iraq could cost from $100 billion to $200 billion: “‘It’s unacceptable,’ Bush continued, his voice rising. ‘He shouldn’t be talking about that.’” • “As press secretary, I spent countless hours defending the administration from the podium in the White House briefing room. Although the things I said then were sincere, I have since come to realize that some of them were badly misguided.” • “History appears poised to confirm what most Americans today have decided: that the decision to invade Iraq was a serious strategic blunder. No one, including me, can know with absolute certainty how the war will be viewed decades from now when we can more fully understand its impact. What I do know is that war should only be waged when necessary, and the Iraq war was not necessary.” • McClellan describes his preparation for briefing reporters during the Plame frenzy: “I could feel the adrenaline flowing as I gave the go-ahead for Josh Deckard, one of my hard-working, underpaid press office staff, … to give the two-minute warning so the networks could prepare to switch to live coverage the moment I stepped into the briefing room.” • “‘Matrix’ was the code name the Secret Service used for the White House press secretary." McClellan is on the lecture circuit and remains in the Washington area with his wife, Jill.
McClellan is his mother's son. His mom never has put up with BS, and Scott has finally had enough. I'm not surprised that he's finally done this, or waited until now to publish his book. The man has a conscious and despises being used. Obviously, he thought long and hard about whether to wait until after the election or to publish now. Kudos to the guy for not waiting. This is one volume I will definitely purchase. Thanks, Major. Impeach Bush. Hurry!
Exactly what I've thought. In particular, one of my main gripes at Bush is that he's conducted the Iraq war and occupation like a continual campaign event.
I'm curious to see the right's response to this (if they even do - which is doubtful). This is everything the left has been saying about the Bush administration, stated by one of the Bush admin's most inside people. I normally don't read memoirs, but this one could be very interesting! I had forgotten that he was Strayhorn's son!
That's been the style of his governing for all things. When a problem arises, don't spend time thinking about how to fix it, or God forbid, actually fixing it... just control the message and everything will be OK.
Is there a more difficult job than White House press secretary under GW Bush? That BS propaganda machine totally killed Ari Fleischer and Scott McClellan.
glad to see him come out and say this. my favor for bush's press secretaries has lessened with each appointment. fleischer is easily my favorite, followed by mcclellan.
I wonder if there was ever a circumstance to prosecute these bastards and make it stick. The weak democratic majority of 06 seems to have dampen public anger over the admin to the point where these damning accounts roll off their backs.
I happened upon Karl Rove on Hannity & Colmes last night. He quickly de-bunked some of these assertions. I surfed past in the middle of the segment so I don't know how he addressed other points and I don't know which points he didn't address, i.e. I saw no discussion of the Iraq War... but I'm sure Alan Colmes didn't let him off the hook. On Katrina: the decision boiled down to flying around (and seemingly ignoring) New Orleans or landing in New Orleans and pulling resources away from the rescue efforts. The fly-over was really a no-brainer choice. On secret meetings: Rove pointed out that he and Libby officed about 20 feet apart and that they regularly met 3-4 times a week so the notion that they held some special meeting is a curious one. They met all the time and McClellan was never part of those meetings-- not just the one that he has in mind. That's all I saw...
It will be the same as it has been for every other Bush insider who reveals negative info about the administration. "They're selling a book."
about the running the war like a campaign, rimrocker wrote one of usual eloquent posts on the same subject but instead of the war, katrina http://bbs.clutchfans.net/showthrea...=20&highlight=bush+presidency+failure+katrina Sorry Ref, but you have to distinguish between the storm and the rest... the preplanning, the immediate pre and post-response, and the long-term response. As a guy who dabbles in disaster response and even trains people, I just do not agree that the preplanning, the assistance before the storm hit, the help after the storm hit, and the rebuilding of the area would be anywhere close to the same under any other modern President... forget the distinction between W and Clinton... nobody would have let the issues go as long and responded as poorly as this administration did. No president would have been as disinterested... no president, including Reagan and 41, would have let ideology trump humanitarian response as much... no president would have made so many promises he had no intention of keeping... and no other president would have allowed their party's apparatchiks to respond and defend indefensible actions by blaming the victims while trying to divide the public reaction by race. Even Reagan would have said, "Knock it off." Finally, no administration would have created such a top-down approach where every major decision had to be run up the flag pole to the WH, even if there was nobody around during the vacation days to make the decision. They made the critical mistake of treating a genuine emergency like a political issue and their only way of dealing with a political emergency is to control the message. They tried to impose a normal message control hierarchy onto a situation that demanded immediate on-the-ground decisions and they curtailed the freedom of many people across the country to respond appropriately. Real events play hell with such an approach as we see all too well in other actions. To illustrate, their was no overall planning during the days after the storm. Different groups of responders covered the same ground while some places were not visited. The only agency that came out looking good was the Coast Guard, who essentially ignored everybody in DHS, plotted their own grids, and effectively deployed their helicopters and resources (until W needed them for a photo op). I could sit here and write for hours about the preplanning, the coordination between agencies and governments before the storm hit and afterwards, the mobilization of responders, and the rebuilding (lack thereof). I'm sorry, but Katrina as a whole would not have been nearly as bad under other presidents. I base that on news articles... but even more on the observations of people I know and trust.
man thats some pretty damning stuff but most of it was already quite obvious. i guess its interesting that this is coming from someone who worked on the administrations side. any moment now, i expect damage control from our favorite conservative posters. 5... 4... 3... 2...
Of course all the liberal boo birds come running out to champion a low level staffer out to make some cash after his dismissal for poor performance.
A low level staffer? He was the freaking press secretary. This was not the "undersecretary to the assistant agriculture secretary's secretary". He was the public face of this administration. Oh, that and he resigned.
if you're going to allow meowgi to use your account you better ask him to stop responding in the D&D. I thought something was weird in the thread about the 75k seeing obama in oregon. now its obvious.
PRESS secretary it's not the kind of secretary that answers phones and takes messages. i think you're confused.
so the whitehouse says mcclellan is disgruntled... mr. petrino, well hell yeah! id be digruntled if i found out that my integrity as a professional was used and abused to push policies based on lies and false pretenses. mr. rove, maybe mcclellan didnt speak up at the time bc he didnt know all the facts. http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/front/5804656.html May 28, 2008, 10:57AM Ex-spokesman McClellan 'disgruntled,' White House says By JENNIFER LOVEN Associated Press WASHINGTON — Former White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan writes in a new memoir that President Bush relied on an aggressive "political propaganda campaign" instead of the truth to sell the Iraq war, and that the decision to invade pushed Bush's presidency "terribly off course.' The Bush White House made "a decision to turn away from candor and honesty when those qualities were most needed" — a time when the nation was on the brink of war, McClellan writes in the book entitled What Happened: Inside the Bush White House and Washington's Culture of Deception. The way Bush managed the Iraq issue "almost guaranteed that the use of force would become the only feasible option." "In the permanent campaign era, it was all about manipulating sources of public opinion to the president's advantage," McClellan writes. White House aides seemed stunned by the scathing tone of the book, and Bush press secretary Dana Perino issued a statement that was highly critical of their former colleague. "Scott, we now know, is disgruntled about his experience at the White House," she said. "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." Perino said the reports on the book had been described to Bush, and that she did not expect him to comment. "He has more pressing matters than to spend time commenting on books by former staffers," she said. The book provoked strong reactions from former staffers as well. "For him to do this now strikes me as self-serving, disingenuous and unprofessional," Fran Townsend, former head of the White House-based counterterrorism office, told CNN. Said former top aide Karl Rove, in an interview with Fox News Channel, "If he had these moral qualms, 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." Richard Clarke, another former counterterrorism adviser who also came out with a book critical of administration policy, said he could understand McClellan's thinking, however. Clarke told CNN that he, too, was harshly criticized, saying that "I can show you the tire tracks." McClellan called the Iraq war a "serious strategic blunder," a surprisingly harsh assessment from the man who was at that time the loyal public voice of the White House who had followed Bush to Washington from Texas. "The Iraq war was not necessary," he concludes. "Waging an unnecessary war is a grave mistake." McClellan admits that some of his own words from the podium in the White House briefing room turned out to be "badly misguided." But he says he was sincere at the time. "When words I uttered, believing them to be true, were exposed as false, I was constrained by my duties and loyalty to the president and unable to comment," he said. "But I promised reporters and the public that I would someday tell the whole story of what I knew." The former press secretary — the second of four so far in Bush's presidency — explained his dramatic shift from loyal defender to fierce critic as a difficult act of personal contrition, a way, he wrote, to learn from his mistakes, be true to his Christian faith and become a better person. "I fell far short of living up to the kind of public servant I wanted to be," McClellan writes. He also blames the media whose questions he fielded, calling them "complicit enablers" in the White House campaign to manipulate public opinion toward the need for war. McClellan said Bush loyalists will no doubt continue to think the administration's decisions have been correct and its unpopularity undeserved. "I've become genuinely convinced otherwise," he said. The book is scheduled to go on sale Sunday. Quotes from the book were first reported Tuesday night by the Web site Politico, which said it found McClellan's memoir on sale early at a bookstore. McClellan draws a portrait of Bush as possessing "personal charm, wit and enormous political skill." He said Bush's record as Texas governor and "disarming personality" inspired him to follow him and that his administration early on possessed "seeds of greatness." But, McClellan said, Bush's unwillingness to admit mistakes and belief in his own spin contributed to turning the president into "not quite the leader I once imagined him to be." He faults Bush for a "lack of inquisitiveness" and "a degree of self-deception that may be psychologically necessary to justify the tactics needed to win the political game." Bush "convinces himself to believe what suits his needs at the moment," McClellan writes.
Is anyone else having trouble accessing politico.com? I haven't been able to get it since I got this new Macbook late last week. I'm running latest version of Mac OS and latest versions of Safari and Firefox. Can get to any other website, but not politico.
