Maybe little Scotty thought he deserved a Medal of Freedom like Dubya's other buddy, Clintonista Tenant.
Dubya has a problem with retaining incompetents in critical positions.
Posted on 05/27/2008 3:46:19 PM PDT by byteback
ormer 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 went too easy on the administration.
—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 the full facts.
—McClellan asserts that the aides — Karl Rove, the president’s senior adviser, and 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 publication date. Politico declined, and purchased “What Happened” at a Washington bookstore.
(Excerpt) Read more at politico.com ...
Love it.
What I find to be the most disturbing, if you read the entire article in Politico... all the phrases that Scott McClellan uses come straight out of the Democratic hand book. The way the sentences read and the verbage, lingo, etc...
If I didn’t know any better, he was a Democratic mole.
McClellan wouldn't know a "propaganda artist" if it bit him on the ass.
Never has a President been served so poorly by a press aide.
The biggest point on which to criticize the Bush WH in this area is that a pitiful boob like Scott McClellan was ever employed there in the first place. Yes, that was a misjudgment for which we are still paying the price.... and that SM epitomizes the half-hearted, mostly incompetent approach that the WH has too often displayed for getting out the real facts, countering leftist propaganda, etc. As for campaign mode and propaganda, good heavens, one of the biggest problems has been that the WH has so often allowed our enemies to shape the stories and dictate what’s important, how things are understood, etc.
SM has apparently written the nasty tell-all that will make him rich and please the enemies of America. Good job, Scottie!
“This too, shall pass”
Scott McClellan was Bush’s pathetic press secretary, between two good ones, Ari Fleischer and Tony Snow. He was exactly the wrong person in the wrong job at the wrong time.
>>>White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan writes in a surprisingly scathing memoir to be published next week
nothing surprising here....
McClellan is no different that any other (former) Washington poltical operative....
They’re all stinking whores....
FWIW, no one to blame but Bush for this one. It was obvious for almost the whole time that McClellan was press secretary that he was doing a lousy job. Yet he was kept on for month after month of screwups and incompetence.
Why did Bush put up with it for so long? Every president is going to make a few bad appointments, it’s inevitable. But then you correct them, before more damage is done.
And don’t tell me it’s loyalty to his subordinates. Why should a President be loyal to his failures but screw the subordinates who are trying to do a good job, like Scooter Libby, or the Haditha Marines, or Compean and Ramos?
So, now he gets his reward for keeping him on much longer than he should have done.
Thanks for your comments. I agree.
An incompetent ash*** no question. If you go back in the FR archives, moi, and several others were also expressing our doubts about his competency while he served as Bush's press secretary. Bush, out of loyalty, held out way to long in finally replacing him. This loyalty, of course, was not reciprocated.
As Truman once put it 'If you want a loyal friend in Washington, buy a dog'.
Maybe little Scotty thought he deserved a Medal of Freedom like Dubya's other buddy, Clintonista Tenant.
Dubya has a problem with retaining incompetents in critical positions.
I hate to say it, but the guy is no Einstein. He shouldn’t have been in the position he was in.
First, he accuses Bush of doing “propaganda” about the Iraq war. If he was paying attention, he would have noticed that the problem is the reverse. The press has been doing propaganda, and Bush and McClelland did not. The press had and always has home-field advantage, they buy their newsprint by the ton after all, but Bush and McClelland owed it to the public to get the story out. They didn’t do it. No help from the DNC mouthpieces in the press, but then you don’t expect them to help. You have to do it, and McClelland didn’t do it. Clearly, he has bought into the DNC propaganda on the war. He believes it, why? because he read it in the paper.
Next, he accuses Rove and Libby of getting their stories straight. He seems not to know that Armitage already confessed. There was nothing for Rove and Libby to get straight in any negative sense of the word, although if I was Rove or Libby and I was being accused of something I didn’t do, and neither Bush nor McClelland were out there defending me, I’d probably want to have a chat.
Get this straight. It was Armitage. Rove and Libby were innocent, and the spokesman who ought to have defended them doesn’t know that.
Katrina?
The governor of Louisiana refused to send in the National Guard because, stop me if you’ve heard this before, because it wasn’t safe. It wasn’t safe, so she would not send in the National Guard.
The rest of the Katrina disaster flowed right out of that disastrous abdication of responsibility.
The federal parts of the puzzle worked as they were supposed to. The Navy was on the scene before the wind stopped blowing. FEMA was on hand ready to answer the calls that never came, because the governor wouldn’t move. National Guardsmen from neighboring states were mobilized, ready to answer the call that never came from the governor who wouldn’t act.
So when did things finally start to move? When Bush finally over-rode the state governor and federalized it. He didn’t have to do it in Mississippi, or Texas, or Alabama, only in New Orleans, where a governor and a mayor refused to act.
But McClelland seems not to have noticed that. As Bush’s chief communicator, he was and is a disaster.
It is true that after the initial invasion met with complete success, there was poor planning and execution of any strategy for dealing with the aftermath of the invasion. The leadership on the ground in Iraq was also slow to adjust to the changing face of the enemy. However, what I got from this thread is that McClellan is claiming that the Bush White House cooked the information leading up to the war in order to justify the initial campaign. On that score I must concur with those who are excoriating this bum.
Agree with you on the worst ever press secretary. Didn’t his mother run in TX as an independent against Gov Perry?
Never did like McClellan from the day he was named.
Excellent post.
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