McClellan breaks rank Bush loyalists are puzzled — and pissed
By
Max J. Castro Read Spanish Version
majcastro@gmail.com
Just
when it seemed the Bush administration finally had exceeded its
allotment of late-term calamities and embarrassments — from
miniscule approval ratings to an economic nightmare and an unending
war — comes Scott McClellan and his new book (What
Happened, Inside the Bush White House and Washington’s Culture of
Deception)
calling
Iraq an “unnecessary war,” one the administration manipulated the
American people into supporting.
Just
what does McClellan say in his new book that it has steered such
controversy? McClellan accuses the Bush administration of waging "a
political propaganda campaign to sell the war to the American
people” and in engaging in “shading the truth.” He says of the
president that “his leadership style is based more on instinct than
deep intellectual debate. His intellectual curiosity tends to be
centered on knowing what he needs in order to effectively articulate,
advocate and defend his policies.” And, at several junctures,
McClellan directly exposes Bush’s mendacity, as when Bush confesses
privately to his press secretary that he personally authorized
leaking classified intelligence to discredit an Iraq war critic after
publicly saying he would punish anyone who had done such a thing, or
when Bush tells McClellan that he did not remember if he ever used
cocaine, a claim even McClellan realized is hardly credible.
Much
of this is not new, and the former Bush press secretary is not the
first or the highest administration official to break rank and come
clean about the rot at the core of the Bush regime. But he may be the
most unlikely whistle-blower of all. Not only did McClellan serve as
the president’s loyal mouthpiece for almost three years (July
2003 to April 2006), defending the Iraq war as it became increasingly
clear that the invasion and occupation had been an enormous blunder,
the former press secretary is a Bush loyalist since Texas days.
Why
did he do it? One of the ironies of the McClellan affair is that now
the same defamation and disinformation machine that McClellan once
operated is coming to crush him. The character assassination
apparatus now being deployed against McClellan has two modes, soft
and hard. “Puzzled” is the operative word of the soft approach,
repeated time and again by heavyweights like the president and Karl
Rove, Bush’s former top political adviser. “This is not the Scott
we knew,” they proclaim in unison, “what happened to him?” Rove
compared McClellan’s transformation to an “out-of-body
experience” and said McClellan sounded like “a left-wing
blogger.”
The
soft approach sets up the hard core attack by right-wing radio and a
motley crew of sycophants rising up to defend the administration
against McClellan’s alleged perfidy. The move from soft to hard
attack goes like this. How did McClellan end up sounding like a
left-wing blogger? It absolutely could not be a sincere conversion.
That is just not Scott! There can only be one reason. Follow the
money: McClellan has sold out for thirty pieces of silver — or
perhaps quite a bit more.
There
is, of course, another explanation. Perhaps he simply decided to tell
the truth. Perhaps he decided to repent. Perhaps he is looking for
redemption. Who knows? But note that, characteristically for the Bush
administration and the Republican smear machine, all of the charges
against McClellan have been personal. As a reader of the Baltimore
Sun
wrote in a letter to the editor concerning those attacking McClellan:
“Several suggested that
they didn’t recognize the Mr. McClellan they knew and loved from his
book…But not one person contradicted Mr. McClellan’s contention
that the president disregarded or discarded intelligence that
disputed the contention that Iraq possessed weapons of mass
destruction. Perhaps the reason that they don’t recognize Mr.
McClellan is that he’s finally standing up and telling the truth
instead of spouting the party line.”
The
ferocious reaction from Bush’s bunker is predictable. But how
should longstanding critics of the Bush administration react to
McClellan’s very late and very incomplete transformation? The
temptation is to disparage McClellan as a late comer and an
opportunist. That would be a mistake. While there is no need to throw
McClellan a party or give him a medal, the tale he tells, coming from
a former Bush bootlicker, puts one more nail in Bush’s legacy and
in the political prospects of John McCain and the Republican Party in
November. For this — and without mincing words about what McClellan
has been — he deserves the benefit of the doubt about where he is
now and what he might become tomorrow.
