How Scott Got Hot

Rich Lowry:

"Likable, but maladroit and plodding, he was the perfect spokesman for the administration of Harriet Miers, Michael Brown, and Al Gonzales . . . McClellan's book has all the inherent interest of one of his briefings."

Kathryn Jean Lopez:

"Scott McClellan does a lot of empty whining about 'the Washington game' in his book, and on his media tour thus far. Ironically, Scott McClellan is what's wrong with Washington: people in power who don't believe in anything."

In the Wall Street Journal, Peggy Noonan is a bit more sympathetic:

"The book can be seen as a grenade lobbed over the wall. Thus the explosive response. He is a traitor, turncoat, betrayer, sellout. If he'd had any guts he would have spoken up when he was in power.

"I want to quote his defenders, but he doesn't have any.

"Those in the mainstream media who want to see the president unmasked, who want to see the administration revealed as something dark, do not want to be caught cheering on the unmasker.

"The left, while embracing the book's central assertions, will paint him as a weasel who belatedly 'fessed up. They're big on omertà on the left. It's part of how they survive.

"The right will--already has--pummel him for disloyalty. But those damning him today would have damned him even more if he'd resigned on principle three years ago. They--and the administration--would have beaten him to a pulp, the former from rage, the latter as a lesson: This is what happens when you leave and talk."

Meanwhile, after hanging in during the Jeremiah Wright furor, Barack Obama quit Trinity Church over the weekend. The precipitating event was that video of a guest pastor, Michael Pfleger, carrying on as if he were Hillary, lamenting that "I'm white" and "I'm entitled" and "a black man is stealing my show!" Have you noticed that wasn't much of a newspaper story? It was Fox News relentlessly playing the tape, followed by the other cable networks, and then the network newscasts, and the New York Times finally carrying a story Saturday.

Well, it was a story. If you're a presidential candidate, do you want to defend that rant? But the hour-after-hour repetition on cable made the situation untenable for Obama. (He also said that some journalists were harassing Trinity parishioners. I'd like to see if there's any evidence of that.)