I am reading What Happened, Scott McClellan’s book about his years as George W. Bush’s press secretary. Why… Well that is a fine question. Mostly because I remember very well the day he was busted by the press corps for lying to them about Scooter Libby and Karl Rove and how he stood there, one inch from being some sweaty, groveling patsy from a 40’s gangster movie, and said something like, “I look forward to the day when I can share my thoughts with you.” In other words, LISTEN, YOU WANKERS, YOU THINK YOU’RE PISSED? I’M THE ONE WHO LIED TO THE WHOLE COUNTRY. I JUST WENT BACK TO SCOOTER’S OFFICE AND TOLD HIM THE NEXT TIME HE WANT TO $!%! ME HE SHOULD KISS ME FIRST.
I had sympathy for the man then, and watching his interviews over the course of the last month I still find him to be a vaguely sympathetic character, still trying to hang on to his “great personal affection” for the worst president ever, who lied to him and made him the patsy he was. An interesting spectacle, played out on, I think, every interview program. It’s been fascinating to watch how so much of The media (or should it be The Media? or the MEDIA?) has treated McClellan’s book as if it were just another disaffected insider’s account of a presidency. But tell me: when has any presidency ever had so many disaffected insiders writing about such core things as lying about war, incompetence, cronyism, and so on? People have put McClellan in the category of Stockman, Reich, and so on. But Stockman and Reich were disaffected by their presidents’ policy choices. McClellan is writing about something a lot more fundamental than that.
The person who is in my mind as I read McClellan’s book and some of the coverage of what he’s going through now is David Brock, the former conservative hatchet man whose book, Blinded by the Right, is good reading for anyone who wants to understand the right-wing hatchet machinery of the late 20th/early 21st century. Brock wrote the seminal attack piece on Anita Hill and was a darling of the right wing nut scene until he told what he knew about how that machine worked in the late 80’s and early 90’s–at which point they excoriated him. Like they’re doing to McClellan now. (Brock went on to found Media Matters for America, a terrific website that keeps tabs on misinformation in the MEDIA. THE media. whatever.)
Which brings me to the hard thing about reading McClellan’s book: he writes about how partisan the 90’s were, how nasty both sides were. But he obviously hasn’t read Brock’s book–and he should. Politics may have always been a gutter sport in our country, but the modern era of viciousness was defined by Lee Atwater and Roger Ailes (yes, the man who started Fox News) in 1988. McClellan writes about how Clinton, in the early days of his presidency, went negative–as if he hadn’t been savaged by the right wing attack machine all throughout the 92 campaign. McClellan even lists the ridiculous Clinton “scandals” of the 90’s as things that actually mattered: Travelgate, anyone? Really? The first lady fires the travel office staff, and that leads to congressional hearings? The Rose law firm billing records? Please.
Does anyone in the day and age of Iraq, Plame, Gonzales, etc., really argue that any of those Clinton “scandals” amounted to anything important? Yes, I include the sleazy sex with an intern. No one died from that.
It’s also hard for anyone who always thought Bush was an over-confident, narrow-minded, arrogant soandso to empathize with McClellan’s heartfelt feeling that Bush could be a very good or great president. But it is clear that it’s heartfelt, so as I read it I end up feeling like you do when your friend finds out that the girl he really thought was “the one” has been banging the entire football team (and everyone knew it)–sorry for him that he’s in pain, but with a dose of, C’mon, man, you had to have known….
Is it possible that Bush really did have bipartisan designs, but that once 9/11 happened the Cheneyites just took over? That Bush was so overmatched on foreign policy issues–as was Condi Rice, his National Security Advisor–that he just deferred to Cheney et al?
On that level, it’s very interesting to read McClellan’s take. But if you don’t have the strength, I will summarize for you. Tune in again.
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