http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/05/27/mcclellan.book/index.html

Quote :

" Ex-Bush spokesman: President used 'propaganda' to push war # Story Highlights # Scott McClellan's upcoming book is harsh on President Bush and his advisers # Book: Bush "confused the propaganda campaign" with honesty # McClellan writes that Bush was "terribly ill-served by his top advisers" # Bush spokeswoman: White House not commenting until they have the book WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The spokesman who defended President Bush's policies through Hurricane Katrina and the early years of the Iraq war is now blasting his former employers, saying the Bush administration became mired in propaganda and political spin and at times played loose with the truth."

Clearly, he's just bitter.

Or whatever the standard term for ex-Bush administration people is.

5/28/2008 8:11:15 AM

It's funny that the white house says that they haven't seen the book when you know it has to go through them before it gets published due to classified information and the sort.

5/28/2008 8:19:26 AM

Even more interesting is the excerpts from the book posted in the Wall Street Journal article below:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121198457525625977.html?mod=googlenews_wsj

The excerpts paint McCellan as a disillusioned supporter whom was ultimately let down by his idealistic (at least partially) view of Bush as a person and as a politician/president. Such a book in my opinion could probably avoid the brunt of the negative publicity it's getting by getting published years after Bush leaves office. But hey, it's his book...

The story the media will gloss over is the fact that McClellan criticizes Bush's aides and the Washington culture far more than Bush himself. The book will likely lose some luster due to the fact that a lot of these accusations have already been voiced for years, albeit largely by far less reputable critics. In the end McClellan will join an alredy crowded list of disgruntled employees ready to spill the beans on an adminstration that's already taken a beating for its apparent incompetance, deserved or otherwise.

Quote :

"As press secretary, I spent countless hours defending the administration from the podium in the White House briefing room. Although the things I said then were sincere, I have since come to realize that some of them were badly misguided. In these pages, I've tried to come to grips with some of the truths that life inside the White House bubble obscured. My friends and former colleagues who lived and worked or are still working inside that bubble may not be happy with the perspective I present here. Many of them, I'm sure, remain convinced that the Bush administration has been fundamentally correct in its most controversial policy judgments, and that the dis-esteem in which most Americans currently hold it is undeserved. Only time will tell. But I've become genuinely convinced otherwise. * * * Most of our elected leaders in Washington, Republicans and Democrats alike, are good, decent people. Yet too many of them today have made a practice of shunning truth and the high level of openness and forthrightness required to discover it. Most of it is not willful or conscious. Rather, it is part of the modern Washington game that has become the accepted norm. As I explain in this book, Washington has become the home of the permanent campaign, a game of endless politicking based on the manipulation of shades of truth, partial truths, twisting of the truth, and spin. Governing has become an appendage of politics rather than the other way around, with electoral victory and the control of power as the sole measures of success. That means shaping the narrative before it shapes you. Candor and honesty are pushed to the side in the battle to win the latest news cycle… Ironically, much of Bush's campaign rhetoric (in 1999-2000) had been aimed at distancing himself from the excesses of Clinton's permanent campaign style of governing. The implicit meaning of Bush's words was that he would bring an end to the perpetual politicking and deep partisan divisions it created. Although Washington could not get enough of the permanent campaign, voters were seemingly eager to move beyond it. Bush emphasized this sentiment during the campaign. He would "change the tone in Washington." He would be "a uniter, not a divider." He would "restore honor and dignity to the White House." He would govern based on what was right, not what the polls said. He would, in short, replace the cynicism of the 1990s with a new era of civility, decency, and hope. There would be no more permanent campaign, or at least its excesses would be wiped away for good. But the reality proved to be something quite different. Instead, the Bush team imitated some of the worst qualities of the Clinton White House and even took them to new depths. Bush did not emulate Clinton on the policy front. Just the opposite – the mantra of the new administration was "anything but Clinton" when it came to policies. The Bush administration prided itself in focusing on big ideas, not playing small ball with worthy but essentially trivial policy ideas for a White House, like introducing school uniforms or going after deadbeat dads. But a significant aspect of the Clinton presidency that George W. Bush and his advisers did embrace was the unprecedented pervasiveness of the permanent campaign and all its tactics. In hindsight, it is clear that the Bush White House was actually structured to emulate and extend this method of governing, albeit in its own way. The most obvious evidence that the Bush White House embraced the permanent campaign is the expansive political operation that was put in place from day one. Chief political strategist Karl Rove was given an enormous center of influence within the white House from the outset. This was only strengthened by Rove's force of personality and closeness to the president. * * * The permanent campaign also ensnares the media, who become complicit enablers of its polarizing effects. They emphasize conflict, controversy and negativity, focusing not on the real-world impact of policies and their larger, underlying truths but on the horse race aspects of politics – who's winning, who's losing, and why… The press amplifies the talking points of one or both parties in its coverage, thereby spreading distortions, half-truths, and occasionally outright lies in an effort to seize the limelight and have something or someone to pick on. And by overemphasizing conflict and controversy and by reducing complex and important issues to convenient, black-and-white story lines and seven-second sound bites the media exacerbate the problem, thereby making it incredibly hard even for well-intentioned leaders to clarify and correct the misunderstandings and oversimplifications that dominate the political conversation. Finally, it becomes much more difficult for the general public to decipher the more important truths amid all the conflict, controversy and negativity. For some partisans, that is fine because they believe they can maneuver better in such a highly politicized environment to accomplish their objectives. But the destructive potential of such excessively partisan warfare would later crystallize my thinking. * * * When Bush was making up his mind to pursue regime change in Iraq, it is clear that his national security team did little to slow him down, to help him fully understand the tinderbox he was opening and the potential risks in doing so. I know the president pretty well. I believe that, if he had been given a crystal ball in which he could have foreseen the costs of war – more than 4,000 American troops killed, 30,000 injured, and tens of thousands of innocent Iraqi citizens dead – he would have never made the decision to invade, despite what he might say or feel he has to say publicly. And though no one has a crystal ball, it's not asking too much that a well-considered understanding of the circumstances and history of Iraq and the Middle East should have been brought into the decision-making process. The responsibility to provide this understanding belonged to the president's advisers, and they failed to fulfill it. Secretary of State Colin Powell was apparently the only adviser who even tried to raise doubts about the wisdom of war. The rest of the foreign policy team seemed to be preoccupied with regime change or, in the case of Condi Rice, seemingly more interested in accommodating the president's instincts and ideas than in questioning them or educating him. An even more fundamental problem was the way his advisers decided to pursue a political propaganda campaign to sell the war to the American people. It was all part of the way the White House operated and Washington functioned, and no one seemed to see any problem with using such an approach on an issue as grave as war. A pro-war campaign might have been more acceptable had it been accompanied by a high level of candor and honesty, but it was not. Most of the arguments used – especially those stated in prepared remarks by the president and in forums like Powell's presentation at the UN Security Council in February 2003 – were carefully vetted and capable of being substantiated. But as the campaign accelerated, caveats and qualifications were downplayed or dropped altogether. Contradictory intelligence was largely ignored or simply disregarded. Evidence based on high confidence from the intelligence community was lumped together with intelligence of lesser confidence. A nuclear threat was added to the biological and chemical threats to create a greater sense of gravity and urgency. Support for terrorism was given greater weight by playing up a dubious al Qaeda connection to Iraq. When it was all packaged together, the case constituted a "grave and gathering danger" that needed to be dealt with urgently. * * * "

5/28/2008 1:07:45 PM

Continued:

Quote :

"To this day, the president seems unbothered by the disconnect between the chief rationale for the war and the driving motivation behind it, and unconcerned about how the case was packaged. The policy is the right one and history will judge it so, once a free Iraq is firmly in place and the Middle East begins to become more democratic. Bush clung to the same belief during an interview with Tim Russert of NBC News in early February 2004. The Meet the Press host asked, "In light of not finding the weapons of mass destruction, do you believe the war in Iraq is a war of choice or a war of necessity? " The president said, "That's an interesting question. Please elaborate on that a bit. A war of choice or a war of necessity? It's a war of necessity. In my judgment, we had no choice, when we look at the intelligence I looked at, that says the man was a threat." I remember talking to the president about this question following the interview. He seemed puzzled and asked me what Russert was getting at with the question. This, in turn, puzzled me. Surely this distinction between a necessary, unavoidable war and a war that the United States could have avoided but chose to wage was an obvious one that Bush must have thought about in the months before the invasion. Evidently it wasn't obvious to the president, nor did his national security team make sure it was. He set the policy early on and then his team focused his attention on how to sell it. It strikes me today as an indication of his lack of inquisitiveness and his detrimental resistance to reflection, something his advisers needed to compensate for better than they did. Most objective observers today would say that in 2003 there was no urgent need to address the threat posed by Saddam with a large-scale invasion, and therefore the war was not necessary. But this is a question President Bush seems not to want to grapple with. * * * I still like and admire George W. Bush. I consider him a fundamentally decent person, and I do not believe he or his White House deliberately or consciously sought to deceive the American people. But he and his advisers confused the propaganda campaign with the high level of candor and honesty so fundamentally needed to build and then sustain public support during a time of war. Had a high level of openness and forthrightness been embraced from the outset of his administration, I believe President Bush's public standing would be stronger today. His approval ratings have remained at historic lows for so long because both qualities have been lacking to this day. In this regard, he was terribly ill-served by his top advisers, especially those involved directly in national security. All the president can do today is hope that his vision of Iraq will ultimately come true, putting the Middle East on a new path and vindicating his decision to go to war. I would welcome such a development as good for America, good for Iraq, and good for the world. Bush knows that posterity has a way of rewarding success over candor and honesty. But as history moves to render its judgment in the coming years and decades, we can't gloss over the hard truths this book has sought to address and the lessons we can learn from understanding them better. Allowing the permanent campaign culture to remain in control may not take us into another unnecessary war, but it will continue to limit the opportunity for careful deliberation, bipartisan compromise, and meaningful solutions to the major problems all Americans want to see solved"

5/28/2008 1:08:06 PM

read this yesterday *pats self on back*

5/28/2008 1:09:16 PM

the best is the headline on cnn.com

"Book slamming Bush puzzles White House"

Seriously? How could yet another book about what a crappy president he's been puzzle anyone at this point??

5/28/2008 1:22:47 PM

prolly cause he was press secretary

5/28/2008 1:24:41 PM

Quote :

"McClellan takes issue with the book by former Bush White House counter-terrorism czar Richard Clarke, "Against All Enemies: Inside America's War on Terror," on March 22, 2004: McCLELLAN: Well, why, all of a sudden, if he had all these grave concerns, did he not raise these sooner? This is one-and-a-half years after he left the administration. And now, all of a sudden, he's raising these grave concerns that he claims he had. And I think you have to look at some of the facts. One, he is bringing this up in the heat of a presidential campaign. He has written a book and he certainly wants to go out there and promote that book. Certainly let's look at the politics of it. His best buddy is Rand Beers, who is the principal foreign policy advisor to Senator Kerry's campaign. The Kerry campaign went out and immediately put these comments up on their website that Mr. Clarke made. ... "

5/28/2008 9:35:20 PM

haha i could care less...i'm still glad he came out and wrote his book...i wish more former bush cronies would come out with books like this

5/28/2008 9:43:57 PM

Nice, McClellan is a traitor now, according to the white house.

Quote :

"MSNBC’s Kevin Corke reported this afternoon that White House officials, on background, went even further, calling McClellan a “traitor” and likening him to Benedict Arnold. He said the White House was “upset,” substituting that word for a word he said he could not repeat on television:"

http://thinkprogress.org/2008/05/28/mcclellan-traitor/

5/28/2008 11:01:02 PM

the white house was "pissed off" ?

5/28/2008 11:55:00 PM

yeah thats all i could think of

5/28/2008 11:55:29 PM

This is so neat and tidy with what the left has been speculating really happened, that it almost seems like an elaborate hoax. I almost get the feeling that at the end of this book, it's going to say "Psyche!" and maybe a rickroll or something.

5/28/2008 11:59:44 PM

McClellan always looks like he was uncomfortable up there - fidgety and sweaty, like he knew he was lying. At the least, if we are to take him at his word now, maybe he didn't exactly know he was lying personally (i.e. maybe he was just saying what they told him to say), but did know that he wasn't being fed the whole truth

5/29/2008 12:21:39 AM

Quote :

"It's funny that the white house says that they haven't seen the book when you know it has to go through them before it gets published due to classified information and the sort. "

5/29/2008 12:30:45 AM

when i heard about this(his negative comments in the book) i wasnt that surprised honestly...he was on larry king like 6 months ago and didnt sound too happy with the administration

i got that feeling too^^^ it just seems odd how he comes out right in the middle of an election year to publish this book which is full of nothing but common sense

^^dude there is no doubt in my mind that he was telling what he thought was the truth

^pretty good point...didnt think of it like that...either they are playing coy or are really that incompetent

[Edited on May 29, 2008 at 12:33 AM. Reason : .]

[Edited on May 29, 2008 at 12:33 AM. Reason : .]

5/29/2008 12:31:18 AM

Quote :

"As I explain in this book, Washington has become the home of the permanent campaign, a game of endless politicking based on the manipulation of shades of truth, partial truths, twisting of the truth, and spin."

It has been like this for almost a century. This is nothing new.

5/29/2008 12:44:20 AM

Quote :

"McClellan takes issue with the book by former Bush White House counter-terrorism czar Richard Clarke, "Against All Enemies: Inside America's War on Terror," on March 22, 2004: McCLELLAN: Well, why, all of a sudden, if he had all these grave concerns, did he not raise these sooner? This is one-and-a-half years after he left the administration. And now, all of a sudden, he's raising these grave concerns that he claims he had. And I think you have to look at some of the facts. One, he is bringing this up in the heat of a presidential campaign. He has written a book and he certainly wants to go out there and promote that book. Certainly let's look at the politics of it. His best buddy is Rand Beers, who is the principal foreign policy advisor to Senator Kerry's campaign. The Kerry campaign went out and immediately put these comments up on their website that Mr. Clarke made. ..."

I'm trying to decide if that bolsters or undermines the book.

5/29/2008 8:22:59 AM

^
He called out Bush, and he's a hypocritical disloyal prick. Kinda of a love/hate relationship. Such is the fate of whistle-blowers.

[Edited on May 29, 2008 at 11:24 AM. Reason : .]

5/29/2008 11:03:54 AM

He took the job as press secretary... he basically is the administrations propaganda arm. And he takes offense to that? If he felt so deeply about the propaganda, why did he serve for 3 years?

5/29/2008 11:07:36 AM

i was under the impression he was upset because they misled him

5/29/2008 1:35:54 PM

He stated in several interviews that he didn't really get pissed off until he was being lied to directly, in regards to the Plame affair. He said the Iraq stuff bothered him somewhat, but not so much as having people he's working with (including the president) lie to him point blank.

5/29/2008 1:43:55 PM

That is apples to oranges. In his book, he accuses the president of propagandizing the Iraq war. I realize the Plame stuff is an issue, but to say that Iraq was a minor "annoyance" isn't true. And if it is true, he greatly exaggerated the "propagandizing" phrase.

5/29/2008 1:45:04 PM

Have you seen the interviews? He basically says in them that they would take extremely reliable evidence and mix it with high-risk (probably not true) evidence and package them together. He said it was basically like running a campaign the whole time, and not governing.

5/29/2008 1:47:56 PM

the part i got most out of his book was his comments on bush's candor and demeanor...the plame thing i could care less about, iraq was kinda an obvious mistake and its been 5 years so its not like we can change it....but his comments on bush basically cherrypicking the evidence that supported his case and his willful disregard for evidence that didnt support his case was what i really liked...kinda showed bush for the true dumbass he is

5/29/2008 1:53:47 PM

He actually painted bush in a rather positive view. He claims that bush is very idealistic and works from his gut, something that basically screws him over in the long run. He says that bush is a very admirable character but is just surrounded by enablers with bad advice.

5/29/2008 1:56:47 PM

yeah upon reading the original article i read i guess it wasnt that bad...i read one article on yahoo that was about how stubborn and dumb he was


this was probably what i enjoyed the most out of the first article i read

Quote :

"Bush was “clearly irritated, … steamed,” when McClellan informed him that chief economic adviser Larry Lindsey had told The Wall Street Journal that a possible war in Iraq could cost from $100 billion to $200 billion: “‘It’s unacceptable,’ Bush continued, his voice rising. ‘He shouldn’t be talking about that.’”"

http://news.yahoo.com/s/politico/20080527/pl_politico/10649;_ylt=Ao5kkQRvIX_NQHFKOvae4qGs0NUE

wish i could find the second article i read


http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080528/ap_on_go_pr_wh/bush_mcclellan_book

Quote :

" "The heart of the book concerns Bush's decision to go to war in Iraq, a determination McClellan says the president had made by early 2002 — at least a full year before the invasion — if not even earlier." "He signed off on a strategy for selling the war that was less than candid and honest," McClellan writes in "What Happened: Inside the Bush White House and Washington's Culture of Deception.""

Quote :

"McClellan says the president was "insulated from the reality of events on the ground and consequently began falling into the trap of believing his own spin.""

Quote :

"But McClellan ticks off a long list of Bush's weaknesses: someone with a penchant for self-deception if it "suits his needs at the moment," "an instinctive leader more than an intellectual leader" who has a lack of interest in delving deeply into policy options, a man with a lack of self-confidence that makes him unable to acknowledge when he's been wrong."

[Edited on May 29, 2008 at 2:23 PM. Reason : hmmm...obama has more intellectual supporters than anyone else in the race...hmmmm]

5/29/2008 2:14:55 PM

kinda surprised by how much negative media attention this is getting, like the guy committed treason...i figure its because if they(news orgs) agree with them, they will be admitting they were soft on their coverage leading up to the war, and if its one thing the main news organizations dont want to do, its admitting when they fucked up...seems like all the bush cronies are like rabble rabble rabble hes just disgruntled, and even the people you'd think would eat this story up(liberal media) are questioning the guys motives and disregarding his theory that they were soft...when i first read this story, my immediate thought was that it was just gonna be an "i told ya so" type thing

5/30/2008 4:51:36 AM

Quote :

"It's funny that the white house says that they haven't seen the book when you know it has to go through them before it gets published due to classified information and the sort. "

what sort of classified information would be in the book, and why in the hell would the White House approve its release?

5/30/2008 8:40:14 AM

I saw an interview a while back with someone from the white house that wrote a book and they were talking about how much of a hassle it was to get the book cleared because things kept getting redacted and they'd have to do re-edits because much of the stuff in the book was considered either classified or was covered by executive privilege.

5/30/2008 8:44:48 AM

Yeah, we did already know this, but this is where the fun begins. Most rationale people of both parties will accept what McClellan has published as a compelling description of Washington. On the other hand, all of the die hard republicans will do exactly that, die hard. It's not a good time to be a part of the Bush Administration, or a supporter of their campaign of idiocy. Republicans need to regroup quickly before they lose all of their fiscal conservative base.

5/30/2008 8:51:16 AM

Quote :

"There are miserable creatures like you in every administration who don’t have the guts to speak up or quit if there are disagreements with the boss or colleagues. No, your type soaks up the benefits of power, revels in the limelight for years, then quits, and spurred on by greed, cashes in with a scathing critique."

-- Bob Dole


oh snap!

5/30/2008 3:23:13 PM

lol bob dole is 800 and 76 years old

6/1/2008 12:54:22 AM

Bob Dole's moral outrage might have merit if he didn't stand so firmly beside Richard Nixon.

6/1/2008 1:51:52 AM

Quote :

"what sort of classified information would be in the book, and why in the hell would the White House approve its release?"

Names of people involved in intelligence briefings who may have been covert operatives for example. I'm not sure it's necessarily required that a former whitehouse staffer have their book vetted for classified information, but the publishers' legal departments insist regardless. Doing something like revealing (even inadvertently if they could argue negligence) the name of a covert operative who was attending a security briefing could bring criminal charges and civil suits against the publishing company and author. While I doubt the bush white house (at this lame duck stage) would have the stupidity and balls to try to quash a book with dubious claims of its contents being classified, publishing companies and their lawyers don't want to risk being sued because they committed high-treason resulting in the loss of someone's job.

Anyways, a couple outlets are reporting the white house did see the manuscript well before it was published. They raised no concerns as far as classified information, but did take issue with information they felt fell under executive privilege.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/05/30/scott-mcclellan-book-whit_n_104390.html

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21134540/vp/24895859#24895859

It seems that this advance copy of the book was required since he held a security clearance.

[Edited on June 1, 2008 at 2:41 AM. Reason : ]

6/1/2008 2:39:29 AM

bob dole made a pepsi commercial with britney spears that was laced with sexual innuendo and (i think) a vague reference to viagra

6/1/2008 2:45:43 AM

^^^
^

Hey, it's that Viagra that lets him stand firmly by anything he wants.

6/1/2008 2:57:38 AM

10/10.

6/2/2008 10:12:03 AM

this is the first time in months i've tuned into the daily show

6/2/2008 11:20:07 PM

I guess some of you never heard of this guy:

6/2/2008 11:44:15 PM

he was on Fresh Air today. I caught a few minutes of it on the way home from work and he sounded pretty candid. Going to download the rest of it and listen
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=91061991

6/3/2008 12:24:06 AM

this is the first time in months i've searched for a torrent of the daily show

6/3/2008 4:57:54 AM