In Ex-Spokesman.s Book, Harsh Words for Bush
By ELISABETH BUMILLER
Published: May 28, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/28/washington/28mcclellan.html
PHOENIX -- President Bush "convinces himself to
believe what suits his needs at the moment," and
has engaged in "self-deception" to justify his
political ends, Scott McClellan, the former White
House press secretary, writes in a critical new
memoir about his years in the West Wing.
In addition, Mr. McClellan writes, the decision to
invade Iraq was a "serious strategic blunder," and
yet, in his view, it was not the biggest mistake
the Bush White House made. That, he says, was "a
decision to turn away from candor and honesty when
those qualities were most needed."
Mr. McClellan's book, _What Happened: Inside the
Bush White House and Washington's Culture of
Deception,_ is the first negative account by a member
of the tight circle of Texans around Mr. Bush. Mr.
McClellan, 40, went to work for Mr. Bush when he
was governor of Texas and was the White House press
secretary from July 2003 to April 2006.
The revelations in the book, to be published by
PublicAffairs next Tuesday, were first reported
Tuesday on Politico.com by Mike Allen. Mr. Allen
wrote that he bought the book at a Washington store.
The New York Times also obtained an advance copy.
Mr. McClellan writes that top White House officials
deceived him about the administration's involvement
in the leaking of the identity of a C.I.A. operative,
Valerie Wilson. He says he did not know for almost
two years that his statements from the press room
that Karl Rove and I. Lewis Libby Jr. were not
involved in the leak were a lie.
"Neither, I believe, did President Bush," Mr.
McClellan writes. "He too had been deceived, and
therefore became unwittingly involved in deceiving
me. But the top White House officials who knew the
truth -- including Rove, Libby, and possibly Vice
President Cheney -- allowed me, even encouraged me,
to repeat a lie."
He is harsh about the administration's response to
Hurricane Katrina, saying it "spent most of the
first week in a state of denial" and "allowed our
institutional response to go on autopilot." Mr.
McClellan blames Mr. Rove for one of the more damaging
images after the hurricane: Mr. Bush's flyover of
the devastation of New Orleans. When Mr. Rove brought
up the idea, Mr. McClellan writes, he and Dan
Bartlett, a top communications adviser, told Mr.
Bush it was a bad idea because he would appear
detached and out of touch. But Mr. Rove won out,
Mr. McClellan writes.
A theme in the book is that the White House suffered
from a "permanent campaign" mentality, and that
policy decisions were inextricably interwoven with
politics.
He is critical of Secretary of State Condoleezza
Rice for her role as the "sometimes too accommodating"
first term national security adviser, and what he
calls her deftness at protecting her reputation.
"No matter what went wrong, she was somehow able to
keep her hands clean," Mr. McClellan writes, adding
that "she knew how to adapt to potential trouble,
dismiss brooding problems, and come out looking like
a star."
Mr. McClellan does not exempt himself from failings --
"I fell far short of living up to the kind of public
servant I wanted to be" -- and calls the news media
"complicit enablers" in the White House's "carefully
orchestrated campaign to shape and manipulate sources
of public approval" in the march to the Iraq war in
2002 and 2003.
He does have a number of kind words for Mr. Bush,
particularly from the April day in 2006 when Mr.
Bush met with Mr. McClellan after he learned he was
being pushed out. "His charm was on full display,
but it was hard to know if it was sincere or just
an attempt to make me feel better," Mr. McClellan
writes. "But as he continued, something I had never
seen before happened: tears were streaming down both
his cheeks."
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