Unanswer Man

NBC's David Gregory broke in, declaring the administration to be "inconsistent," then "hypocritical."

"You have a policy for some investigations and not others, when it's a political ally who you need to get work done?" Gregory asked.

McClellan: "Call it presidential prerogative; he responded to that question. But the White House established a policy." He mentioned that the DeLay case is a "legal proceeding."

Gregory: "As is the Fitzgerald investigation. . . . As you've told us ad nauseam from the podium."

After more back-and-forth, McClellan said, "You can get all dramatic about it, but you know what our policy is."

Which ended that exchange.

"We've come to understand that no matter how we slice and dice something, Scott's going to stick to the recipe," says Ken Herman, White House correspondent for Cox News Service. "I can't think of any topic where on the sixth or seventh iteration of a question we get something different from the original answer. By somebody's measure, that's the definition of doing the job well. Certainly not ours."

As with most people who do regular televised battle with McClellan, Herman says McClellan is a nice guy, polite and friendly off-camera. "He seems to have the right temperament to be a punching bag," Herman says.

"Who knows, maybe he goes home at night and kicks his dog?"

The Thing

It should surprise no one that McClellan is an unexpansive interview subject. He toggles on and off the record, although the latter offerings are only slightly more revealing than the former.

Over lunch at the Occidental at the Willard Hotel, McClellan says that he is "honored" to serve George W. Bush, that he will "vigorously defend the president and his agenda," that "Washington can be an all-consuming town if you allow it to be," that there are "a lot of bright people working in the White House," that he has "great trust in the American people to make the right judgments" and that he's merely "part of a team."

And that: "It's a good team."