It’s somewhat sad to see what is happening to Scottie McClellan. Even when he was spinning like an Iranian uranium-enrichment centrifuge, I always felt a strange kind of sympathy for Scottie. Now I know why. I recognized a sliver of humanity in him that is lacking in all other Bushite sycophants. McClellan has come (oh, I don’t know…) 60% clean in his new tell-part book and the White House and their apologists are calling him ‘Benedict Arnold’, ‘a traitor’, ‘a turncoat’, a ‘Hamas apologist’ (???), and “probably the worst White House press secretary in recent memory.”
Maybe McClellan and Bill Richardson can start a club. They can call it ‘The Judas Club’. It will be for anyone that served in an administration and later lived to regret it. McClellan’s got it really bad (except for his anticipated book sales) because even the left is piling on. Why did he go out there day after day after day and spin like a break dancer for an administration that he knew didn’t know how to govern or how to tell the truth? Isn’t it too late for Scottie to come to Jesus?
Well, I say, ‘better now than after the administration is out of power’. No matter how badly you screw up there is always the best thing for you to do now. And if you can make a profit off it, so much the better. This is fucking America, and don’t you ever forget it.
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. In these pages, I’ve tried to come to grips with some of the truths that life inside the White House bubble obscured.
It was so hard to hate Scottie, even when he took weaseldom to previously unheard of levels.
GREGORY: Scott … to make a general observation here, in a previous administration, if a press secretary had given the sort of answers you’ve just given … Republicans would have hammered them as having a kind of legalistic and sleazy defense. I mean, the reality is that you’re parsing words, and you’ve been doing it for a few days now. So does the president think Karl Rove did something wrong, or doesn’t he?
McCLELLAN: No, David, I’m not at all. I told you and the president told you earlier today that we don’t want to prejudge the outcome of an ongoing investigation. And I think we’ve been round and round on this for two days now…
GREGORY: … When you’re dealing with a covert operative … a senior official of the government should be darn well sure that that person is not undercover, is not covert, before speaking about them in any way, shape or form. Does the president agree with that or not?
McCLELLAN: Again, we’ve been round and round on this for a couple of days now. I don’t have anything to add to what I’ve said the previous two days.
GREGORY: That’s a different question, and it’s not round and round —
McCLELLAN: You heard from the president earlier.
GREGORY: It has nothing to do with the investigation, Scott, and you know it.
McCLELLAN: You heard from the president earlier today, and the president said he’s not —
[Pitch, volume and tempo are rising…]
GREGORY: That’s a dodge to my question. It has nothing to do with the investigation. Is it appropriate for a senior official to speak about a covert agent in any way, shape or form without first finding out whether that person is working as a covert officer?
McCLELLAN: Well, first of all, you’re wrong. This is all relating to questions about an ongoing investigation, and I’ve been through this.
GREGORY: If I wanted to ask you about an ongoing investigation, I would ask you about the statute, and I’m not doing that. [Very exasperated.]
McCLELLAN: I think we’ve exhausted discussion on this the last couple of days.
GREGORY: You haven’t even scratched the surface.
Q. It hasn’t started.
But to reminisce about those days is to pick at a scab. Scottie McClellan feels remorse about his performance during l’affaire Plame and now he’s blaming the press for not asking tougher questions. As Karl Rove said, McClellan sounds like a left-wing blogger. I don’t want to betray confidences, but I have it first-hand from a McClatchey White House reporter than McClellan was a swell guy that always tried to tell the truth. It’s just that, nine times out of ten, the truth wasn’t on the menu. And we’ve all regretted going to a bad restaurant or two.
