WASHINGTON NEWS
McClellan Story Takes Sharper Political Turn
Scott McClellan's White House memoir remained the top media story in the country for another day. With former White House aides leading the charge against the book, McClellan emerged from the shadows to sit down for interviews with all three networks and several major newspapers only this time as a full-fledged critic of President Bush's policies. The story took a markedly political turn yesterday. In a sign of the former aide's political transformation, he told interviewers that he is "intrigued" by Sen. Barack Obama's presidential candidacy. ABC World News noted McClellan is "even considering voting for a Democrat." McClellan: "I'm intrigued by Senator Obama's message," but "I haven't made any decision." The statement was repeated almost verbatim in other interviews.
Meanwhile, the conservative Wall Street Journal editorial page this morning makes allegations that place the story squarely in the middle of this year's presidential election. The Journal writes, "You can tell the Democratic presidential race is all but over. Cable television has returned to 24/7 coverage of whether President Bush lied us into war in Iraq. The latest peg is the Texan-bites-Bush story of former White House press secretary Scott McClellan's memoir. ... We'd merely note that the book's publisher is PublicAffairs, an imprint founded by left-wing editor Peter Osnos and which has published six books by George Soros. PublicAffairs is owned by Perseus Books, which is owned by Perseus LLC, a merchant bank whose board includes Democrats Richard Holbrooke and Jim Johnson, who is now doing Barack Obama's vice presidential vetting. One of Perseus's investment funds, Perseus-Soros Biopharmaceutical, is co-managed with Mr. Soros."
Moreover, the Los Angeles Times editorializes this morning that "the person who needs to respond to McClellan's charges is not George W. Bush but John McCain." McCain's "ideas on how and when to end the war matter more now than his vote to give the president the power to wage it. But voters should know whether he believes the invasion was a strategic mistake." Adds the Times, "If McCain wants to be taken seriously as a more honest, competent and moderate Republican than Bush, he's going to have to answer some of the questions he has avoided," dealing with the run-up to war and the White House's treatment of "dissenters."
ABC World News noted McClellan said "his change of heart" about Bush "came after only a lot of soul-searching and truth-seeking." McClellan was shown saying, "This was a presidency that veered badly off course. It was something that all of us would have preferred didn't happen." Asked about his "loyalty" to Bush, the former aide said, "No one questioned my loyalty to the President when I was there," but now "it's a higher loyalty. It's a loyalty to the truth. It's a loyalty to the values I was raised upon." Of Bush, he said, "I have a lot of personal affection for him. I think, in terms of some of his policies, he was misguided." McClellan repeated the loyalty line on the CBS Evening News.
USA Today also conducted a phone interview with McClellan. McClellan "cited 'two defining moments' that led to his becoming 'disillusioned with the way the White House operated.' One involved claims by White House aides Karl Rove and Scooter Libby that they had nothing to do with news leaks about Plame. ... The second event occurred in April of 2006, just before his departure." Bush "told McClellan he had authorized the leak of parts of a secret intelligence report on Iraq, even though the administration had publicly opposed such selective disclosure of classified information." But the AP reports that in an AP interview, "McClellan said Bush 'still clings to the hope that history is going to vindicate him.'" He added, "I would welcome such a development."
That Was Then, This Is Now NBC Nightly News noted that "if the knock on McClellan is: 'why didn't he speak up sooner?,' it should sound familiar. Here's what then press secretary said four years ago when asked about counterterror adviser Richard Clarke's critical book about the President." McClellan was shown saying, "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. Now all of a sudden, he's raising these grave concerns that he claims he had."
Yet yesterday Clarke was among McClellan's defenders, saying on Comedy Central's Daily Show, "It's like an echo chamber. I turned on the TV the other day and there were White House people saying he is a disgruntled ex-employee, that he is out of the loop. ... I think there is a little box in the White House that says, 'If anybody escapes from the White House and tells the truth, break this box and take out these talking points...say he is a disgruntled employee, say it is an election year and he is trying to sell books.'"
White House Criticism Cast As Orchestrated. Some stories this morning focus on the continuing criticism of McClellan. The New York Times remarks on the "kind of public excommunication of Mr. McClellan by some of the people he once worked most closely," whose "cries of betrayal from former aides served as a stern warning to other potential turncoats that, despite some well-publicized cracks, the Bush inner circle remains tight. Their language was so similar that the collective reaction amounted to a big inside-the-Beltway echo chamber." The Times adds, "All seemed to take their cues from Dana Perino, the current press secretary. Ms. Perino used the words 'sad' and 'puzzled' to describe the White House response, as if Mr. McClellan had undergone some kind of emotional breakdown, while making the case that if Mr. McClellan had problems with Mr. Bush he should have raised them while in the president's employ." And "all seemed to suggest that maybe Mr. McClellan had been hijacked by liberal New York book editors who prodded him to turn out a memoir that did not reflect his own beliefs." USA Today and Christian Science Monitor also touch on the White House response to McClellan.
The Washington Post, meanwhile, reports on McClellan's motives for writing the book, and concludes they may be warranted: "One wonders whether this book would have been written were it not for the deep resentment he harbors toward those involved, particularly Karl Rove and Scooter Libby but also the president and vice president, for allowing -- even encouraging -- him to stand in the White House briefing room and unknowingly give out false information." The Washington Post also reports, "There are a number of signs that McClellan's focus hardened over time. A book cover still depicted yesterday on Amazon.com, for example, had the subtitle ending with 'What's Wrong with Washington' rather than 'Washington's Culture of Deception.'"
Source: http://www.usnews.com/usnews/politics/bulletin/bulletin_080530.htm