REACT: Book burning Bush should be burned

According to the press, the book is a sensation. “Former George Bush loyalists turns on him,” is the generic headline.

Seems like one-time White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan has poison penned a tome that scoops shovels full of insider dirt on the President and his key advisors. The book will be a HUGE success in the hands of the gleeful left wing literati and media establishment. The liberal talk show circuit will be filled with “we told you so” bleating.

Now, I know Bush is a bit of a dunce. His presidency is a failure whether you view it from the right or the left. His approval rating suggests that even his mother may be turning on him. Yep! He blew it. No question about it.

However … don’t you feel a little queasy reading McClellan’s slashing account of his former boss? There is something in the human soul (a good something) that makes us distain backstabbers.

This is a guy who got his career from the beneficence of George Bush. He was sending the Bush White House message to the world. He was their flack … their mouthpiece … their spinner. Now he writes a self-serving diatribe against his padrone.

And why? To enlighten and warn the public about the inner workings of the Bush administration in the last few months of its existence? Nooooooooo! He does it solely and selfishly for … yeah … money, and maybe another fifteen minutes in the public eye. In the old street parlance, the guy’s a ratfink.


Oh yeah! There is that other reason. Maybe a little payback for the President recognizing that McClellan was not the sharpest knife in the drawer. It is also true that the high political family were not given the political status they thought they deserved.

What really galls is that he uses the tell-all format to kick a guy while he’s down. With a writer’s precision and prerogative, McClellan absolves himself of any complicity and culpability. Oh yeah! He was the oracle espousing the bull dung. But, he was misinformed by those meanies like Karl Rove, Scooter Libby and Dick Cheney. (This is where you are supposed to shed a tear for poor ole Scott).

McClellan would like us to believe that he is an honorable and truthful man, victimized by those above him. I’m not buying it. He was part of the schemer team, the key spin advisor. If the White House was dishing out bad stuff, McClellan was more than a waiter delivering it to the public table. He was at least a sous chef.

I think the sleazy nature of this guy can be seen in accusing Karl Rove and Scooter Libby or comparing notes to get their story straight regarding the outing of Valerie Plame as a CIA undercover agent. McClellan says he hates to report this particular incident because he was not privy to the conversation between Rove and Libby. So, why does he write about it?

In the book McClellan says that after a senior staff meeting, Rove asked Libby to meet with him privately. Libby agreed, and they went off to another room.

That’s it. Two White House staffers, go off for a private conversation, and McClellan scurrilously surmises that they are engaging in a sinister conversation to concoct mutual alibis in the Plame case. Why else would the want to meet in private?, McClellan asks. Oh … I don’t know. But, I bet there are at least a few hundred issues of mutual interest – and that does not count personal matters like setting up a golf date. And even if they did want to discuss the Plame problem, it is not exactly illegal. In this, McClellan elevates “cheap shot” to a whole new level of meaning. No matter what you think of these guys, this is just wrong.

He still claims to respect the President. How phoney can a guy be? His words exude animus and vitriol in every paragraph.

If the Bush administration was trying to sell a bad product, McClellan was the hawker-in-chief. Perhaps it was his ability to recycle trash that provided him with the skill and the motivation to write trash. If George Bush was not exactly his role model, McClellan can always look to Benedict Arnold and Judas Iscariot.