Vindication for the Bush Critique

Here's McClellan on page 260 of his book: "Eventually, long after leaving the White House, I came to see that standing in front of the speeding press bus in those days had much more to do with protecting the president and White house from further political embarrassment than respecting the sanctity of the investigation."

You don't say.

And McClellan also would like us to believe that he thinks Bush should have demanded an internal investigation into the CIA leak case early on, and "should have ordered the public release of as much information as possible as soon as it was known, to that the scandal would not take on a life of its own."

But McClellan seems to forget a key point: The stonewall that Bush ordered, that McClellan so dutifully enforced, and that the media largely accepted, arguably won Bush the 2004 election. The politically damaging truth -- that Rove and Libby were indeed involved, and that Cheney may have been as well -- remained obscured for years.

Analysis and Opinion

Dan Balz writes in The Washington Post: "McClellan's portrayal of President Bush -- as intellectually incurious, politically shrewd, occasionally dense, sometimes disingenuous, often charming and always cocksure -- matches that of other critics, including a few ex-administration officials such as former Treasury secretary Paul H. O'Neill. But it is devastating nonetheless.

"His critique of how the administration went to war in Iraq squares with what is now a widely accepted analysis, which is that there was a rush to war and that the administration marshaled the evidence based on faulty intelligence. What makes it sting is that McClellan attaches words and phrases such as 'propaganda' and 'manipulate' and 'cycle of deception' to describe the public relations campaign of which he was a part.

Stanley Crouch writes in his New York Daily News opinion column: "McClellan's description of his years in the Bush White House will not surprise those who have paid attention and have watched as one more dirty trick after another was stripped of its cover until national policy became tantamount to a nudist colony trying to pass itself off as a center for high fashion. . . .

"To me he is one of those minor men who has become a hero because he was disturbed by what he saw and his own involvement in actions and deceptions that reduced the honor of our country. Any revelations about the abuse of power should always be welcomed. They help us know where we are and what has been done to us. For that, if no more, Scott McClellan should be saluted on both sides of the aisle."

Mike Lupica writes in his New York Daily News opinion column: "The hyenas Bush still has in the media will make this all about disloyalty. They won't just try to shoot the messenger - McClellan - they will try to shoot him out of a cannon. They will make him the issue. And when they are through with him, he won't just be a disgruntled former employee, he will be some kind of threat to national security and if you believe him, the terrorists win. . . .

"McClellan is no hero here, or even close. If he believed all these things when he stepped down as Bush's press secretary, nobody was stopping him from saying something as soon as he was out on Pennsylvania Ave. He said nothing at the time. No money there.

"So he is late in the church service finding religion, late having the stomach to tell the truth about the people that he worked with, looks as if he is only doing it to sell a book.

"But take a look at the ones coming after him hardest for the story he is selling this time around. It is those for whom he sold the war, and the ones who helped him do it."