McClellan Recounts Administration's Missed Chances After '04 Election

Believe it or not, even after a week of wall-to-wall media coverage, there's still grist to mull over from the new Scott McClellan memoir, "What Happened."

McClellan, the press-secretary-turned-administration critic, offers an intriguing narrative of the few months after the 2004 election -- a period that he now sees as a badly missed opportunity for a troubled White House to right itself.

Bush was coming off a narrow win over Democrat John Kerry and, as McClellan tells it, was feeling his oats. He writes of the first Cabinet meeting after the election, when Bush told his assembled secretaries that Iraqi leaders were "relieved" about his victory.

"They were toast if you lost," then-Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld is quoted as saying.

"French toast," Bush replied, to laughter. The Cabinet meeting was illustrative of Bush's mind-set, in McClellan's view.

"He was dead set on pushing ahead aggressively, selling his big ideas, and leaving his mark on history," McClellan writes. "The election, he believed, had validated his first term policies, including the decision to invade Iraq, and it had given him a mandate for the second-term agenda he'd outlined."

It also meant that what might have been a chance to bring in fresh blood and new thinking was lost. Even then-Chief of Staff Andrew Card thought the White House would be better served by a change in his position, but that suggestion was "firmly rejected," according to McClellan. Card would stay on for another year and a half before being replaced by Josh Bolten.

Meanwhile, Bush installed such longtime trusted friends as Condoleezza Rice at State and Alberto Gonzales at Justice, while giving expanded powers to Karl Rove-- "ensuring that political considerations would never be far from the center of any policy conversation during the second term." At the same time, Secretary of State Colin Powell was out -- taking away, in McClellan's estimation, a source of independent perspective.

"All in all, the shape and direction of the second term were clear," McClellan concludes. "The administration did not infuse fresh blood and new thinking from outside sources. . . . Caught up inside the White House bubble, I publicly defended all of Bush's decisions. It was my job. I didn't fully appreciate their implications for the future of the administration, nor did I recognize the serious problems they would help to create during the next four years."

Don't Let the Door Hit You . . .

McClellan has been taking guff for stating positions in his book that are at odds with what he said from the White House podium: One such case is his departure from the press secretary's job in spring 2006.

At the time, McClellan suggested that his resignation came at his own instigation, but "What Happened" makes it clear that while McClellan was ready to go, he was basically fired by Bolten. In an anecdote that is revealing of the new chief of staff's tough-minded approach, McClellan recounts sitting down on a couch in Bolten's office and being politely shoved out even before he had a chance to open his mouth.

"This is not something pleasant for me," McClellan quotes Bolten as telling him. "You are really liked around here. I really like you. But I believe this is a White House that is severely crippled and in need of change. One area that I have decided needs to change is your position."