How Scott Got Hot

The book makes clear that McClellan felt badly burned after Karl Rove and Scooter Libby assured him they had no involvement in leaking the identity of CIA operative Valerie Plame, leaving the spokesman to be pummeled by the press when that turned out to be untrue. "It was my reputation crumbling away, bit by bit," he writes. "The ridicule was dispiriting and humiliating. . . . All I could do was go into a defensive crouch and stonewall."

But McClellan's critique is undercut by former colleagues who insist he never aired any misgivings about Bush in private. "Scottie was the truest of the true believers," says former Bush press aide Adam Levine. "Even in the most difficult of times he never wavered or showed any signs of disagreement or doubt. So to see him do this now is beyond comprehension."

Although McClellan staunchly defended Bush's Iraq rationale, he now writes that the national press corps "was probably too deferential to the White House" and that "the 'liberal media' didn't live up to its reputation" by exposing the flimsy rationale for war. This reignited a long-running argument about whether journalists fell down on the job.

Several news organizations, including the New York Times and Washington Post, have acknowledged that they should have been more aggressive in challenging the claims about Saddam Hussein harboring illegal weapons. Skeptical stories were underplayed and dissident voices largely marginalized.

CBS anchor Katie Couric, who was at NBC during the run-up to war, told "The Early Show" last week that this was "one of the most embarrassing chapters in American journalism. . . . There was a sense, a pressure from the corporations who own where we work, and from government itself to really squash any kind of dissent."

CNN correspondent Jessica Yellin, recalling her time at MSNBC, told viewers that "the press corps was under enormous pressure from corporate executives, frankly, to make sure this was a war that was presented in a way that was consistent with the patriotic fervor in the nation. . . . The higher the president's ratings, the more pressure I had from news executives to put on positive stories about the president."

MSNBC spokesman Jeremy Gaines calls Yellin a "disgruntled . . . news reader" who worked there for one year and had "little to no contact with editorial decision-makers." Yellin says she stands by her comments but did not mean to imply that corporate executives were directly giving her orders.

In the end, the journalists' turncoat-of-the-week turned on them as well. Both sides are trying to distance themselves from the administration's failures. Reporters admit they should have pushed back harder; McClellan joins Matthew Dowd, Richard Clarke, Paul O'Neill and others who have assailed their former boss.

But it is McClellan, previously regarded by the media as pleasant but ineffective, who is hawking a harsh book that few imagined he would write. Media outlets that once denigrated him may be giving him a platform, but the lasting image is of McClellan stammering at the White House podium, delivering what he now calls propaganda.

Furthermore . . .

Hillary Clinton carries Puerto Rico by a 2-1 margin, "a widely expected win that underscores the advantage she has enjoyed among Latino voters over Democratic rival Barack Obama," says the L.A. Times. But of course, the media have already moved on.

As I mentioned, National Review has mounted an anti-McClellan blitz. Here are brief excerpts, starting with Jonah Goldberg:

"This all bespeaks a level of sophistication few ever credited McClellan with when he stood at the podium looking like a McDonald's cashier flummoxed by an order. He's hawking books by making people think he's charging the Bush administration with wholesale dishonesty when he's not even making that case at the retail level."