Opinion: Update: McClellan no longer “no comment”
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No need for a spokesperson for the ex-press secretary. Former White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan appeared on NBC’s ‘Today’ show this morning to discuss his upcoming book, ‘What Happened.’ Some of his comments from his interview a few hours ago:
The larger message has been sort of lost in the mix ... The White House would prefer I not speak out openly and honestly about my experiences, but I believe there is a larger purpose.... I had all this great hope that we were going to come to Washington and change it.... Then we got to Washington, and I think we got caught up in playing the Washington game the way it is being played today.... My hope is that by writing this book and sharing openly and honestly what I learned is that in some small way it might help us move beyond the partisan warfare of the past 15 years. There’s a larger purpose to this book. It’s about looking at the permanent campaign culture in Washington, D.C., and how we can move beyond it....
McClellan references the Valerie Plame affair and the president’s declassification of a National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq for political purposes (when the administration publicly expressed disdain for leaks that hurt its political image) as two major ‘turning points’ in his transition from loyal Bush flack to disillusioned ex-spokesperson.
Most striking to me is that McClellan appears decidedly soft in his attacks on the administration officials whom he says disillusioned him the most (Karl Rove, Scooter Libby and Dick Cheney) and faults mainly Washington politics for corrupting otherwise well-intentioned people. When interviewer Meredith Vieira presses him on why he stops short of saying the administration ‘flat-out lied’ in the run up to the Iraq war, McClellan replies, ‘Well, actually, I say in the book, I say that this was not a deliberate or conscious effort to do so. What happened was that we got caught up in the excesses of the permanent campaign culture in Washington, D.C.’
Continuing on the general theme of evil Washington politics corrupting even the most well-intentioned of presidents, McClellan says of Bush’s vision in Iraq:
He absolutely cares very passionately about what he talks about, which is the freedom agenda and spreading democracy throughout the Middle East. It’s a very idealistic and ambitious vision, and that was really the driving motivation that pushed him forward in Iraq -- this chance to, in his view, to really transform the Middle East by making Iraq a linchpin for spreading democracy.
I’m planning on reading McClellan’s book, but I know now that I shouldn’t count on any thoughtful critique of the administration’s policies. Evidently, McClellan hasn’t abandoned every inclination to defend his former boss.