McClellan on Plame (This has to hurt!)

Real Clear Politics ^ | June 2, 2008 | Robert Novak

[dalight]

A partisan Democratic mantra began earlier in the book. McClellan writes George H.W. Bush's 1988 campaign "acquiesced to certain advisers, including Roger Ailes and the late Lee Atwater," who opposed Bush's "civility and decency." (McClellan, then 20 years old, played no part in that campaign.) McClellan contends that thanks to Rove in 2002, "the first cracks appeared in the facade of bipartisan comity."

[stratman1969]

WHO will EVER HIRE Scotty now??? He’s NOT Trustworthy!!

He'd fit in well working for that other liar, David Crock of Media Matters for George Soros.

[Ann Archy]

I think David Brock FLIPPED Scotty.

[Kaslin]

self ping

[newnhdad]

He reminds me of those soldiers that defected to N. Vietnam and N. Korea.. They are used for PR until the collective attention span moves on and they're tossed aside into some menial task like cleaning radios or making brooms.
His job will be hanging coats during the DNC convention.

[Dilbert56]

Novak tears McClellan a new posterior orifice.

After he'd spent so much time talking our the old one.

[Dilbert56]

Has it occurred to the Boy Blunder that Rove saying "I heard that too" is not a confirmation of anything? It certainly doesn't make Rove a "source" on Plame.

[Dilbert56]

The next President should:

• Accept that the media are not a conduit of information that needs to be managed. They are in the entertainment business, chasing ratings. As long as they pick and choose what gets covered there will be no balance.
• Do away with the press conference as an institution. No more having "reporters" gin up contorted assertions that happen to have a question mark at the end. No more 5-second sound bites dominating the coverage.
• If the perfumed princes have a question, they can e-mail the President's press secretary.
• Carve out an advertising budget. If the President's enemies can throw millions of dollars into propaganda, the President needs his own way to counter attack, w/o relying on the media.

[romanesq]

Anyone who knows journalism knows that Robert Novak is perhaps the last of what real journalists did, investigate and report stories.

Reading his book is like a history lesson and gives insight into what a Jimmy Carter II administration will be like under Obama.

And Novak did nothing more than reporting and had to live with slander against him in the Plame game.

[Larry381]

McClellan contends that thanks to Rove in 2002, "the first cracks appeared in the facade of bipartisan comity.

Bipartisan comity? What planet is this skunk living on? Even before Bush took office he was the victim of a concerted effort to delegitimize his presidency (remember Selected, Not Elected), a campaign that continues to this day.

Who ghostwrote this atrocity, Al Gore?

[popdonnelly]

McClellan would have been a big hit in the Confederacy, if they didn’t already have they’re own President.

[kellynla]

BTTT

[caseinpoint]

I was going to call McClellan a quisling but I think that’s giving him too much credit for intelligence. I like Novak’s characterization (or your assessment of Novak’s characterization) better.

[CedarDave]

He does not mention that Armitage turned himself in to the Justice Department even before Patrick Fitzgerald was named as special prosecutor.

Glad you caught that too. I'm equally PO'd that the entire prosecution was unnecessary and instead destroyed an innocent man.

BTW, I read elsewhere on FR that McClellan's book has no footnotes! Should be filed under "fiction."

[SmithL]

I went to school with Lee Atwater. We still need and miss him.

[EODGUY]

So “Beam me up Scotty” got an amazing 75 large as an advance for a piece of tabloid tripe with his name on the cover ?!

He probably cashed the check on the bus that took him back to his residence in his mother’s basement.

My generation had a name for individuals like McClellan. It was “punk”.

EODGUY

[HardStarboard]

Scott “TheDolt” McClellan, self delusional darling, for the moment, of the already self-delusional left.....that just may be a majority of voters in this next election.

[Dahoser]

BOR is a gas bag and a putz. He called us FReepers racists and hate-mongers, while he repeatedly made vitriolic attacks against our Iraqi allies.

Don't forget his trashing of the Swift Boat Vets. That's what ended my viewing of his program.

[EODGUY]

“His robotic performances from the White House podium seemed only to disgorge what he had been told, and “What Happened” has the similar feel of someone else’s hand.
The book so mimics the Democratic line that Ari Fleischer, McClellan’s predecessor as press secretary, asked him last week whether he had a ghostwriter.”

Your quote finally dislodged a visual of McClellan other than the “deer in the headlight” look that he always had when he faced the press.

I recall some of the characters the late Andy Kaufman portrayed with bulging eyes and shivering nervousness and that was McClellan.

EODGUY

[lentulusgracchus]

The Apple doesn't fall far from the tree, it would seem. McClellan's own mother ran in Texas as a Republican, Democrat and Ind depending on which way she though the winds were blowing

Who is his mother? Not Carole Keeton Foghorn Leghorn?

[lentulusgracchus]

The book so mimics the Democratic line that Ari Fleischer, McClellan’s predecessor as press secretary, asked him last week whether he had a ghostwriter

Well, we know Peter Osnos was involved -- I remember him from Washington Week in Review, never liked him, he's a genuine Clymer -- and that George Soros's money fuels the Org that Osnos works for.

I personally smell Sid the Squid in this.