Scott McClellan: Not Saul, Not Paul
Peter Wehner Web Exclusive
Posted on 06/05/2008 7:28:50 PM PDT by neverdem
Peter Wehner Web Exclusive
By now Scott McClellan's credibility has been damaged. He has shown an inability to handle questions from CNN's Anderson Cooper, NBC's Tim Russert, and others. Watching Scott trying to defend himself and his new book, What Happened, was at times a painful experience. His I-was-Saul-but-now-I'm-Paul meme isn't convincing, and so once again he is left reaching for talking points in an effort to keep himself afloat.
McClellan, never a memorable figure, will soon be forgotten. But before the door shuts completely on him, I want to examine some claims he makes in his book.
McClellan, as most of us know by now, accuses President Bush and his administration (in which I worked as a fellow White House staffer with Scott) of turning away from candor and honesty in the run-up to the Iraq war, of manipulating and shading the truth, of being part of a cycle of deception, and of confusing a political propaganda campaign with the realities of a war-making campaign. (During the run-up to the war, of course, Scott was deputy press secretary for domestic affairs, which is one reason why his book offers so few insights about the war.)
It isn't enough that the Bush administration, as well as leading Democrats and much of the rest of the world, got the intelligence on Iraq wrong. McClellan's argument is that the Bush Administration is Exhibit A in Washington's Culture of Deception. Scott would have us believe that he was blinded by having been a part of such a manifestly corrupt operation at the time - but somehow between his book proposal and the publication of his book, the scales magically fell from his eyes. As George Will put it on Sunday, Scott's journey includes government service, signing a book contract, and a moral epiphany. Funny how that happens.
McClellan's book includes few heroes; one of them is former Secretary of State Colin Powell. In his book McClellan describes Powell as a man of "unquestioned honor and integrity" and "independent views," a "moderate voice" who offered "straight, unvarnished advice" and "looked out for the interests of the man he served, as well as the country to whom both had sworn allegiance, with great care and wisdom."
Yet Secretary Powell gave perhaps the most important non-presidential case for war on February 5, 2003, when he spoke before the United Nations. According to Powell's own account, in preparing his presentation
I spent an enormous amount of time with many of my colleagues and with a large part of the top leadership of the CIA, as well as a lot of the working-level analysts of the CIA, closeted in Langley at CIA headquarters for four days and three nights -- or it might be four weeks and three months -- it felt like it. And we were there well into the night, until midnight, 1:00 a.m. every morning, going over everything. We had lots and lots of information. The challenge was to get it down to that which was absolutely supportable and we were confident of.
The problem is that Secretary Powell, who spoke with CIA Director George Tenet seated directly behind him, was wrong on many of the key claims he made, including claims about Iraq's supposed mobile biological weapons labs (they were in fact a producer of hydrogen for military weather balloons); about aluminum tubes, which Powell said could be used as centrifuges for enriching uranium and was proof that Saddam Hussein was determined to acquire nuclear weapons (investigators found no evidence of hidden centrifuges or a revived nuclear weapons program); about Iraq possessing four tons of VX nerve gas (the UN later confirmed that it had been destroyed); and more. The intelligence Powell and the administration relied on was massively flawed, and we didn't pick up on those flaws.
Yet no one, including Scott McClellan, believes Colin Powell deliberately turned away from candor or truth in making his case. Powell knew his reputation, as well as the President's, was on the line. He pressed as hard as he could to confirm what he thought to be true. The fact that he was mistaken is bad enough - but Powell was not guilty of manipulating the truth, being part of a cycle of deception, or confusing a political propaganda campaign with the realities of a war-making campaign.
What is true of Powell is true of the President and his administration, even if a clearly bitter Scott McClellan cannot see that now.
To say that the Bush administration engaged in a "campaign" to "sell" the war is another way of saying that it attempted to win public support on behalf of policies it believed in. And to say that in the heat of a policy debate, which included hundreds of statements by dozens of officials, nuances are sometimes lost is regrettable but not at all uncommon. Yet no one in the Administration, let alone everyone working on national security for the Administration, would put forward a narrative that they knew was misleading and dishonest if they knew it would be revealed as such within a matter of months, during a re-election campaign. You don't advance a falsehood that you know will soon be exposed as a falsehood.
One other thing should be said about McClellan. In a book of more than 300 pages, there is no serious discussion about ideas or the philosophy behind ideas. It is as if he never bothered to acquaint himself with either. McClellan argues (ad nauseam) that our supreme goal should be ending the "permanent campaign," "partisan warfare," and "divisions along ideological lines." We need to bring Republicans and Democrats together to solve "big problems." That, to him, is what it means to be part of something "grand." Bipartisanship, and it alone, constitutes the McClellan agenda.
What seems wholly unimportant to McClellan is whether you side with market forces or greater government control in health care; favor higher or lower taxes; support judicial activists or originalists; believe the government should promote equality of opportunity or equality of outcome; believe unborn children have any rights and are deserving of our protection; believe certain education reforms are needed; believe unlawful enemy combatants ought to be granted the same rights as American citizens; believe we should restrict or upgrade our efforts to eavesdrop on terrorist communications; and believe we should win in Iraq or flee from that central battlefield.
Most of us favor comity rather than acrimony, and to say that much of our politics is consumed by trivial matters borders on the banal. But to argue that bi-partisanship is an end instead of a means to an end is to argue, finally, against the primacy of ideas in politics. It seeks to find common ground, whatever that ground might be. The McClellan motto, stripped to its essence, is, "Can't we all just get along?"
In this regard it's worth noting that the greatest figures in American history - including many of our Founders, Lincoln, FDR, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Ronald Reagan - were "conviction politicians." So, for that matter, were Prime Ministers Thatcher and Churchill. They of course sought common ground where they could find it - but they did not seek it if it came at the expense of their ideas and ideals and principled ambitions. Reverend King did not seek "common ground" and accommodation with Governor George Wallace - and he was right not to. And of course King was viewed as a deeply "polarizing" and "divisive" figure.
On January 22, 1961, the New York Times said this about Martin Luther King, Jr.:
Although [King] has only just turned 32, he has been showered with praise and honor far beyond the expectations of most men twice his age. Yet, he is also the object of bitter hatred, particularly among the whites of his region. The Governor of Georgia, his native state, has declared him unwanted, unwelcome, a man to be watched. Many who sympathize with his goals consider his methods dangerously provocative. Even some Negroes regard him as a pious interloper, bent on personal aggrandizement.
The same criticism was leveled against other great American leaders. For example, in 1981 pollster Peter Hart said, "Reagan has basically made a career of polarizing people." In 1984, Time magazine's George Church wrote, "Despite his winning personality, Reagan throughout his political career has been a polarizing figure who stirs strong antipathy as well as fervent support." Also in 1984, Haynes Johnson of the Washington Post wrote, "[Pollster Lou Harris] believes that Reagan is polarizing the country more than any president since Franklin D. Roosevelt..."
Speaking of FDR, Robert H. Jackson, author of That Man: An Insider's Portrait of Franklin D. Roosevelt, wrote:
Roosevelt was a President toward whom no one was indifferent or neutral. After he had been in office a brief period, the lines began to separate between those in whom he inspired an all-out devotion and those in whom he aroused an implacable hatred. By 1940, every home regarded him as a household idol or its demon. He was well aware of this.
And America's greatest president was also profoundly polarizing. Lincoln biographer Stephen B. Oates wrote this in With Malice Toward None:
And now, in the summer of 1860, [Lincoln] was the Republican candidate for President of the United States in what promised to be the most combustible election the Union had ever known. In the South, Democrats who understood nothing about the candidate as a man, nothing at all, castigated him as a symbol of 'Black Republicanism' -- a 'sooty and scoundrelly' abolitionist who wanted to free the slaves and mongrelize the white race. In the North, Democratic papers disparaged him as a party hack and a political unknown who lacked the ability to serve as President... [Lincoln's] legion of critics... castigated him as a dictator, ridiculed him as a baboon, damned him as stupid and incompetent...
Presumably the great clashes of ideas in American history - like the political battles waged by the "polarizing" and "divisive" Reagan, King, Roosevelt, and Lincoln - would profoundly unsettle McClellan. Fighting on behalf of justice, the dignity of individuals, freedom from tyranny, and the liberation of enslaved people can get contentious sometimes; those with delicate, McClellan-like sensibilities might be better suited to work at a library rather than in the political arena.
When people get involved in politics without caring about ideas and their underlying principles, they run the risk of ending up like Scott McClellan. And that should serve as a cautionary tale to us all.
Peter Wehner is a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center in Washington, D.C. He served in the Bush White House as director of the office of strategic initiatives.
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The Borgias of Texas or even the Theban family of Oedipus — Lots of family dynamics—daddy brother mommy Scottie - Scottie and daddy..and now mommie...
Really? I must have missed that one. Who made that declaration?
What seems to be missing is that saddam had enriched uranium (not weapons grade but could be with further work)which we took to the squeals of the un, parts and plans for centrifuges (The Bomb in My Back Yard-Mahdi Obeidi), the designs and plans for nuclear weapons that the nyt squealed about when published on the gov't website and saddam's own words that he intended to restart his nuke program when sanctions were lifted with the aid of the corruptOil For Food program.
McClellan’s 15 minutes of fame sure flew by. Just think, now he has to spend the rest of his life looking at himself in the mirror and saying, “I’m a lying -—hole!”
Brilliant. Such comebacks I wish I always had at the ready.
This guy is a pathetic jerk. Well, he has his precious Judas gold.
Too bad he was equally as poor a speaker as he is a loyalist.
Pray for W and Our Troops
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