Well, well, well. We all know that a house divided against itself cannot stand, so what happens to the White House, when the roosters start crowing? One such rooster is former White House press secretary Scott McClellan. He was the former spokesman for Bush when he was governor of Texas, was named White House press secretary in 2003, and had previously been a deputy press secretary and was the traveling spokesman for the Bush campaign during the 2000 election and resigned from the White House in 2006, so he has had extensive opportunity to observe and listen.In his new book, scheduled to go on sale June 1, entitled "What Happened: Inside the Bush White House and Washington's Culture of Deception," McClellan drops a dime on how the White House has used the media to deceive and manipulate public opinion.
McClellan draws a portrait of his former boss [Bush] as smart, charming and politically skilled, but unwilling to admit mistakes and susceptible to his own spin. Bush "convinces himself to believe what suits his needs at the moment." (source)
McClellan covers some of the current Administration's major misses, such as Iraq and Katrina, saying the White House "spent most of the first week [after Katrina] in a state of denial...One of the worst disasters in our nation's history became one of the biggest disasters in Bush's presidency," he wrote. "Katrina and the botched federal response to it would largely come to define Bush's second term." He also wrote, "The Iraq war was not necessary."
Needless to say, the White House faithful are scrambling to throw doubt, calling McClellan "self-serving, disingenuous, and unprofessional" and "disgruntled."
Former White House adviser Karl Rove said on Fox News Tuesday that the excerpts from the book he's read sound more like they were written by a "left-wing logger" than his former colleague. (source)
[And that my friends is how you know Mr. McClellan must be telling the truth. The End.]
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