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What Happened: Inside the Bush White House and Washington's Culture of Deception
Scott McClellan was one of a few Bush loyalists from Texas who became part of his inner circle of trusted advisers, and remained so during one of the most challenging and contentious periods of recent history. Drawn to Bush by his commitment to compassionate conservatism and strong bipartisan leadership, McClellan served the president for more than seven years, and witnessed day-to-day exactly how the presidency veered off course. In this refreshingly clear-eyed book, written with no agenda other than to record his experiences and insights for the benefit of history, McClellan provides unique perspective on what happened and why it happened the way it did, including the Iraq war, Hurricane Katrina, Washington's bitter partisanship, and two hotly contested presidential campaigns. He gives readers a candid look into who George W. Bush is and what he believes, and into the personalities, strengths, and liabilities of his top aides. Finally, McClellan looks to the future, exploring the lessons this presidency offers the American people as we prepare to elect a new leader.
341 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2008
90 people are currently reading
843 people want to read
About the author
Scott McClellan
20 books5 followersLibrarian note: there is more than author on goodreads with this name.
Scott McClellan is a former White House Press Secretary (2003-2006) for President George W. Bush.
On April 19, 2006, McClellan announced that he would be leaving the Administration; he remained in the position until replacement Tony Snow was announced on April 26, 2006.
McClellan unexpectedly and harshly criticizes the Bush administration in his 2008 memoir What Happened. He accuses Bush of "self-deception" and of maintaining a "permanent campaign approach" to governing rather than making the best choices. McClellan stops short of saying that Bush purposely lied about his reasons for invading Iraq, writing that the administration was not "employing out-and-out deception" to make the case for war in 2002, though he does write that the administration relied on an aggressive "political propaganda campaign" instead of the truth to sell the Iraq war. The book is also critical of the press corps for being too accepting of the administration's propaganda on the Iraq War and of Condoleeza Rice for being "too accommodating" and being very careful about protecting her own reputation.
The Bush administration responded through Press Secretary Dana Perino, who said, "Scott, we now know, is disgruntled about his experience at the White House. We are puzzled. It is sad. This is not the Scott we knew."
Scott McClellan is a former White House Press Secretary (2003-2006) for President George W. Bush.
On April 19, 2006, McClellan announced that he would be leaving the Administration; he remained in the position until replacement Tony Snow was announced on April 26, 2006.
McClellan unexpectedly and harshly criticizes the Bush administration in his 2008 memoir What Happened. He accuses Bush of "self-deception" and of maintaining a "permanent campaign approach" to governing rather than making the best choices. McClellan stops short of saying that Bush purposely lied about his reasons for invading Iraq, writing that the administration was not "employing out-and-out deception" to make the case for war in 2002, though he does write that the administration relied on an aggressive "political propaganda campaign" instead of the truth to sell the Iraq war. The book is also critical of the press corps for being too accepting of the administration's propaganda on the Iraq War and of Condoleeza Rice for being "too accommodating" and being very careful about protecting her own reputation.
The Bush administration responded through Press Secretary Dana Perino, who said, "Scott, we now know, is disgruntled about his experience at the White House. We are puzzled. It is sad. This is not the Scott we knew."
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September 1, 2018
What Happened: Inside the Bush White House and Washington’s Culture of Deception by Scott McClellan does not qualify as worthy of my valuable and limited reading time. His prose is competent and clear enough, but within the first few pages I’m already rolling my eyes at his clear biases and naiveté. McClellan describes a reporter as a “cordial yet skeptical liberal talk radio journalist” (2). The clear indication is that cordiality is good, liberal and skeptical: bad. All journalists should be skeptical. That’s what makes them good. And I’ve found that the word “liberal” can mean almost anything from radical environmentalist to fact-based reporting. As McClellan continues, he clearly delineates between “reporters/journalists” and “liberal reporters/journalists.” He describes Seymour Hersh, perhaps the most talented investigative reporter of the 20th and 21st century, as “liberal” but also a “diligent reporter with good contacts” (7). I’m sure Hersh is relieved to know that the smear of liberal is off-set somewhat by also being “diligent.”
McClellan was not a wide-eyed idealistic newbie when he joined Bush’s team. At least, he shouldn’t have been. He had helped run his mother’s campaign for the office of comptroller in Texas and had been working in Texas politics as a political strategist. However, he’s approaching this book as the disillusioned lover. The first twenty pages are filled with glowing-to-the-point-of-fawning compliments about Bush. McClellan describes him as a “man of personal charm, wit, and enormous political skill”; “self-confident, quick-witted, down-to-earth, stubborn” (but in a good, presidential leader way); “authentic, with sincere beliefs.” Bush possessing wit and enormous political skill? McClellan, you need to meet more people. Bush’s most consistent strength as a political leader was knowing who to surround himself with: strategists, experts, yes-men. Professionals who could take the burden of running the country off of him; after all, there was all that yardwork needing to be done at the Bush ranch.
While it is possible that McClellan does change course in later chapters, I doubt it. He sets the tone and theme of the book immediately by saying over and over that although he is disappointed in Bush’s decisions and behavior regarding the deception of the Iraq war and the Valerie Plame affair, Bush was unknowingly duped. McClellan excuses Bush’s actions many times. He compares him to Presidents Lyndon Johnson and Nixon—their presidencies unraveled due to their anger and defensiveness and scandals, but not Bush: “He is very much the man he always was” (xii). McClellan thinks he’s being complimentary, but he’s not. He’s basically saying, well, Bush was unchanged by the events of his presidency and not bothered at all by the deceptions that went into starting the Iraq war, a war that would affect the lives of thousands of people, not just American soldiers sent to fight this unnecessary war, but also the lives of the Iraqi citizens. “President Bush, I believe, did not consciously set out to engage in these destructive practices. But like others before him, he choose to play the Washington game the way he found it, rather than changing the culture as he vowed to do at the outset of his campaign” (xiv).
Regarding his official denial that the Bush Administration orchestrated the leaking of classified information (the identity of CIA operative Valerie Plame) to the media, McClellan defends himself and Bush: “I didn’t know what I’d said was untrue until the media began to figure it out almost two years later. Neither, I believe, did President Bush. He too had been deceived, and therefore became unwittingly involved in deceiving me” (3). The culprits, as far as McClellan is concerned are: Vice President Cheney, Karl Rove, “Scooter” Libby, and Andrew Card. Oh, and the liberal, partisan media and the culture of deception that infiltrates Washington. McClellan makes much of the deceptive and corrosive atmosphere of Washington, as if this atmosphere simply created itself and controlled the actions of the political leaders of the country. Oh, wait, no, it was the Clinton White House that created the corrosive Washington culture: “Coming to Washington as a member of a Republican administration, I thought the mentality of political manipulation had been largely the creation of our predecessors in the Clinton White House and that the leader I placed great hope in, George W. Bush, was dead set on changing it” (4). Damn those Clintons, they caused all of America’s badness—and they aren’t done yet! To further this embarrassing display of stupidity and political innocence, McClellan starts chapter three by talking about the idealism of politics and how people who enter the political game do so in the hopes of finding a mythical leader to serve, one with a “strong character, free of debilitating personal flaws, and committed to striving for high ideal and bringing about something as close to Camelot as we can get, where truth, goodness, and beauty reign supreme” (11). Interesting that he uses the word “Camelot.” I’m assuming (as this is a political memoir), he means the Kennedy White House, which—if McClellan had pulled his head out of his ass and done a little research he would have known—had its own very serious problems. JFK’s tenure was short-lived and tragic, thus history looks on it with rose-colored glasses. (It also helps that he was young and handsome with a beautiful, young, fashionable wife.) He holds up the examples of Washington, Jefferson, and Lincoln as the “rarities” of the kind of leadership McClellan yearns for. No wonder his poor little heart was broken by George. Even though McClellan says he didn’t think George was the “most charismatic or awe-inspiring leader in the world when I went to work for him, I believed he possessed enough of those qualities to be a very good, if not great, president” (12). Awww…Scott McClellan, you’re so cute. He’s like the awkward teenager being taunted by his buddies for liking a girl so he says, “oh, gee, she’s okay, I guess, but not great.”
McClelland’s version of What Happened has a spin that can be easily perceived after reading only the preface and first three chapters. He’s an apologist for Bush. While I would like to read more about this subject, I don’t want to be told what to think. I want, as close as possible, a fact-based, bias-free narrative that allows me to decide, based on the evidence, who the assholes are. That is not McClellan’s book. He is a disillusioned lover, a man heartbroken that his hero fell from the high pedestal on which McClellan had placed him. It is a sign of our humanity that we continue to ignore the truth that politicians are mere mortals who are subject to the same temptations, character flaws, vanities, and weaknesses that we are. Politics is best approached pragmatically. We need to stop looking for a godlike figure who will solve all of our problems and rule over us with benevolence (well, except for those of the population we’ve decided are the “other” and need to be crushed beneath our leader-god’s foot). Unfortunately for McClellan, he lost his political cherry to George Bush. I don’t want to read a 300+ page book describing the act in excruciating detail.
McClellan was not a wide-eyed idealistic newbie when he joined Bush’s team. At least, he shouldn’t have been. He had helped run his mother’s campaign for the office of comptroller in Texas and had been working in Texas politics as a political strategist. However, he’s approaching this book as the disillusioned lover. The first twenty pages are filled with glowing-to-the-point-of-fawning compliments about Bush. McClellan describes him as a “man of personal charm, wit, and enormous political skill”; “self-confident, quick-witted, down-to-earth, stubborn” (but in a good, presidential leader way); “authentic, with sincere beliefs.” Bush possessing wit and enormous political skill? McClellan, you need to meet more people. Bush’s most consistent strength as a political leader was knowing who to surround himself with: strategists, experts, yes-men. Professionals who could take the burden of running the country off of him; after all, there was all that yardwork needing to be done at the Bush ranch.
While it is possible that McClellan does change course in later chapters, I doubt it. He sets the tone and theme of the book immediately by saying over and over that although he is disappointed in Bush’s decisions and behavior regarding the deception of the Iraq war and the Valerie Plame affair, Bush was unknowingly duped. McClellan excuses Bush’s actions many times. He compares him to Presidents Lyndon Johnson and Nixon—their presidencies unraveled due to their anger and defensiveness and scandals, but not Bush: “He is very much the man he always was” (xii). McClellan thinks he’s being complimentary, but he’s not. He’s basically saying, well, Bush was unchanged by the events of his presidency and not bothered at all by the deceptions that went into starting the Iraq war, a war that would affect the lives of thousands of people, not just American soldiers sent to fight this unnecessary war, but also the lives of the Iraqi citizens. “President Bush, I believe, did not consciously set out to engage in these destructive practices. But like others before him, he choose to play the Washington game the way he found it, rather than changing the culture as he vowed to do at the outset of his campaign” (xiv).
Regarding his official denial that the Bush Administration orchestrated the leaking of classified information (the identity of CIA operative Valerie Plame) to the media, McClellan defends himself and Bush: “I didn’t know what I’d said was untrue until the media began to figure it out almost two years later. Neither, I believe, did President Bush. He too had been deceived, and therefore became unwittingly involved in deceiving me” (3). The culprits, as far as McClellan is concerned are: Vice President Cheney, Karl Rove, “Scooter” Libby, and Andrew Card. Oh, and the liberal, partisan media and the culture of deception that infiltrates Washington. McClellan makes much of the deceptive and corrosive atmosphere of Washington, as if this atmosphere simply created itself and controlled the actions of the political leaders of the country. Oh, wait, no, it was the Clinton White House that created the corrosive Washington culture: “Coming to Washington as a member of a Republican administration, I thought the mentality of political manipulation had been largely the creation of our predecessors in the Clinton White House and that the leader I placed great hope in, George W. Bush, was dead set on changing it” (4). Damn those Clintons, they caused all of America’s badness—and they aren’t done yet! To further this embarrassing display of stupidity and political innocence, McClellan starts chapter three by talking about the idealism of politics and how people who enter the political game do so in the hopes of finding a mythical leader to serve, one with a “strong character, free of debilitating personal flaws, and committed to striving for high ideal and bringing about something as close to Camelot as we can get, where truth, goodness, and beauty reign supreme” (11). Interesting that he uses the word “Camelot.” I’m assuming (as this is a political memoir), he means the Kennedy White House, which—if McClellan had pulled his head out of his ass and done a little research he would have known—had its own very serious problems. JFK’s tenure was short-lived and tragic, thus history looks on it with rose-colored glasses. (It also helps that he was young and handsome with a beautiful, young, fashionable wife.) He holds up the examples of Washington, Jefferson, and Lincoln as the “rarities” of the kind of leadership McClellan yearns for. No wonder his poor little heart was broken by George. Even though McClellan says he didn’t think George was the “most charismatic or awe-inspiring leader in the world when I went to work for him, I believed he possessed enough of those qualities to be a very good, if not great, president” (12). Awww…Scott McClellan, you’re so cute. He’s like the awkward teenager being taunted by his buddies for liking a girl so he says, “oh, gee, she’s okay, I guess, but not great.”
McClelland’s version of What Happened has a spin that can be easily perceived after reading only the preface and first three chapters. He’s an apologist for Bush. While I would like to read more about this subject, I don’t want to be told what to think. I want, as close as possible, a fact-based, bias-free narrative that allows me to decide, based on the evidence, who the assholes are. That is not McClellan’s book. He is a disillusioned lover, a man heartbroken that his hero fell from the high pedestal on which McClellan had placed him. It is a sign of our humanity that we continue to ignore the truth that politicians are mere mortals who are subject to the same temptations, character flaws, vanities, and weaknesses that we are. Politics is best approached pragmatically. We need to stop looking for a godlike figure who will solve all of our problems and rule over us with benevolence (well, except for those of the population we’ve decided are the “other” and need to be crushed beneath our leader-god’s foot). Unfortunately for McClellan, he lost his political cherry to George Bush. I don’t want to read a 300+ page book describing the act in excruciating detail.
January 19, 2009
Title: Same Old Partisan Crap
I found reading McClellan's partisan memoir to be a total waste of time. I also feel the author lacks credibility and this book offers the same old partisan view we have been fed all along. This book has been targeted towards and panders to the left-leaning partisan audience. McClellan makes a ton of allegations against the Bush Administration but doesn't provide any backing/proof. The book reads like a conspiracy theory.
Although the media response dwelled on McClellan's criticism of Bush's road to war, the CIA leak case is the heart of this book. Throughout the book McClellan virtually ignores Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage's role in leaking Valerie Plame's identity as a CIA employee to Robert Novak. That fits the partisan Democratic version of the Plame affair.
McClellan doesn't present the reader with a single page dedicated to substantial, credible evidence. In all honesty, a monkey with a pen in his hand could have done a better job at logical reasoning.
McClellan's only legitimate censure seems to be his unjust treatment during the Valerie Plame investigation. McClellan conceded in interviews that even when he was an important cog in the "propaganda machine," he never witnessed anything that seemed at the time to be deceitful or untrue. If McClellan had a problem then he should have resigned rather than being kicked out and more importantly he should have spoken up when he had the podium.
In claiming he was misled about the Plame affair, McClellan mentions Richard Armitage only twice. Armitage being the leaker undermines the Democratic theory, now accepted by McClellan that Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney and political adviser Karl Rove aimed to delegitimize Ambassador Wilson (Democratic partisan) as a war critic.
On page 173, McClellan first mentions Robert Novak's Plame leak, but he does not identify Armitage as the leaker until page 306 of the 323-page book -- then only in passing. Armitage, anti-war and anti-Cheney, cannot fit the conspiracy theory that McClellan now buys into. When Armitage after two years publicly admitted he was Novak's source, the life went out of Wilson's campaign. In "What Happened," McClellan dwells on Rove's alleged deceptions as if the real leaker were still unknown.
McClellan at the White House podium never knew the facts about the CIA leak, and his memoir reads as though he has tried to maintain his ignorance. He omits Armitage's slipping Mrs. Wilson's identity to The Washington Post's Bob Woodward weeks before he talked to Novak. He does not mention that Armitage turned himself in to the Justice Department even before Patrick Fitzgerald was named as special prosecutor.
McClellan completely ignores that Fitzgerald's long, expensive investigation found no violation of the Intelligence Identities Protection Act, if only because Plame was not covered. Nevertheless, McClellan calls the leak "wrong and harmful to national security" -- ignoring questions of whether Plame really was engaged in undercover operations and whether her cover long ago had been blown.
I borrowed this book from a friend to read and I'm glad that my 2 cents didn't go into this turncoat's pocket and I pray that yours don't either.
I found reading McClellan's partisan memoir to be a total waste of time. I also feel the author lacks credibility and this book offers the same old partisan view we have been fed all along. This book has been targeted towards and panders to the left-leaning partisan audience. McClellan makes a ton of allegations against the Bush Administration but doesn't provide any backing/proof. The book reads like a conspiracy theory.
Although the media response dwelled on McClellan's criticism of Bush's road to war, the CIA leak case is the heart of this book. Throughout the book McClellan virtually ignores Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage's role in leaking Valerie Plame's identity as a CIA employee to Robert Novak. That fits the partisan Democratic version of the Plame affair.
McClellan doesn't present the reader with a single page dedicated to substantial, credible evidence. In all honesty, a monkey with a pen in his hand could have done a better job at logical reasoning.
McClellan's only legitimate censure seems to be his unjust treatment during the Valerie Plame investigation. McClellan conceded in interviews that even when he was an important cog in the "propaganda machine," he never witnessed anything that seemed at the time to be deceitful or untrue. If McClellan had a problem then he should have resigned rather than being kicked out and more importantly he should have spoken up when he had the podium.
In claiming he was misled about the Plame affair, McClellan mentions Richard Armitage only twice. Armitage being the leaker undermines the Democratic theory, now accepted by McClellan that Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney and political adviser Karl Rove aimed to delegitimize Ambassador Wilson (Democratic partisan) as a war critic.
On page 173, McClellan first mentions Robert Novak's Plame leak, but he does not identify Armitage as the leaker until page 306 of the 323-page book -- then only in passing. Armitage, anti-war and anti-Cheney, cannot fit the conspiracy theory that McClellan now buys into. When Armitage after two years publicly admitted he was Novak's source, the life went out of Wilson's campaign. In "What Happened," McClellan dwells on Rove's alleged deceptions as if the real leaker were still unknown.
McClellan at the White House podium never knew the facts about the CIA leak, and his memoir reads as though he has tried to maintain his ignorance. He omits Armitage's slipping Mrs. Wilson's identity to The Washington Post's Bob Woodward weeks before he talked to Novak. He does not mention that Armitage turned himself in to the Justice Department even before Patrick Fitzgerald was named as special prosecutor.
McClellan completely ignores that Fitzgerald's long, expensive investigation found no violation of the Intelligence Identities Protection Act, if only because Plame was not covered. Nevertheless, McClellan calls the leak "wrong and harmful to national security" -- ignoring questions of whether Plame really was engaged in undercover operations and whether her cover long ago had been blown.
I borrowed this book from a friend to read and I'm glad that my 2 cents didn't go into this turncoat's pocket and I pray that yours don't either.
June 12, 2008
McClellan's memoir of "what happened" in the Bush administration really gets 3.5 stars, but since that's not an option, I'll give it the benefit of the doubt (or of the star).
Anyway - the thing about the book is not any "revelations" about what actually happened. Anyone who's been paying even a modicum of attention the past 8 years knows what happened. What McClellen does is provide an interesting perspective on how it came to happen. Admittedly, his basic theory - that the conduct of public policy as part of the "permanent campaign" rather than as part of "governance" - isn't new with him. But he give appropriate props to Norm Ornstein & Thomas Mann as the authors and his experience is a stark example of the theory in action.
McClellan comes across as a decent guy who wants to believe the best in most people. Yet he manages to take and place enough blame to avoid coming off as self-serving or an apologist for the Bush administration. Even though he has every right to be livid with Rove and Libby over the Plame affair, he still clearly tries hard to be temperate in his comments towards them.
Again, although there's not much "new", I think a few of his observations from his experiences are really well taken. First, is that the White House really does create a bubble out of which its hard to see. Second, if you have a president without a penchant for self analysis or introspection, its all the more important for those who work for him (or her) to be willing to fight,not feed, that tendancy. Third, the tactics and mindset that make for a good campaign make for pretty lousy governance. These onservations/tendencies excuse nothing, but do help explain how public policy often goes awry, even when the people in charge are well intentioned and genuinely want to do the right thing.
I think his book also points out how easy it is for a few not-so well intentioned people to manipulate the tendencies noted above for their own purposes. I don't think that McClellan was actively trying to emphasize that point, but I can't help but think he knew he was making it. As well he should have.
What got the book the benefit of the doubt for the half-star is the fact that he ends the book with some suggestions for improving the system to help the president and White House staff avoid the worst excesses of the tendencies noted above. After all he saw, that he's still optimistic enough to offer suggestions and hold out hope that all is not lost is charming. As a native New Yorker and a Washington attorney, cynicism is both my birthright and my professional obligation. Even so, I cling to what's left of my idealism and find it heartening to know that I'm not the only one. Even more heartening is to find that one of the other people clinging to his is a Repubilcan. Maybe there's hope yet...
Anyway - the thing about the book is not any "revelations" about what actually happened. Anyone who's been paying even a modicum of attention the past 8 years knows what happened. What McClellen does is provide an interesting perspective on how it came to happen. Admittedly, his basic theory - that the conduct of public policy as part of the "permanent campaign" rather than as part of "governance" - isn't new with him. But he give appropriate props to Norm Ornstein & Thomas Mann as the authors and his experience is a stark example of the theory in action.
McClellan comes across as a decent guy who wants to believe the best in most people. Yet he manages to take and place enough blame to avoid coming off as self-serving or an apologist for the Bush administration. Even though he has every right to be livid with Rove and Libby over the Plame affair, he still clearly tries hard to be temperate in his comments towards them.
Again, although there's not much "new", I think a few of his observations from his experiences are really well taken. First, is that the White House really does create a bubble out of which its hard to see. Second, if you have a president without a penchant for self analysis or introspection, its all the more important for those who work for him (or her) to be willing to fight,not feed, that tendancy. Third, the tactics and mindset that make for a good campaign make for pretty lousy governance. These onservations/tendencies excuse nothing, but do help explain how public policy often goes awry, even when the people in charge are well intentioned and genuinely want to do the right thing.
I think his book also points out how easy it is for a few not-so well intentioned people to manipulate the tendencies noted above for their own purposes. I don't think that McClellan was actively trying to emphasize that point, but I can't help but think he knew he was making it. As well he should have.
What got the book the benefit of the doubt for the half-star is the fact that he ends the book with some suggestions for improving the system to help the president and White House staff avoid the worst excesses of the tendencies noted above. After all he saw, that he's still optimistic enough to offer suggestions and hold out hope that all is not lost is charming. As a native New Yorker and a Washington attorney, cynicism is both my birthright and my professional obligation. Even so, I cling to what's left of my idealism and find it heartening to know that I'm not the only one. Even more heartening is to find that one of the other people clinging to his is a Repubilcan. Maybe there's hope yet...
July 1, 2008
Okay, let's be honest. This entire book is a rationale. Well, not just one rationale, but several: For why McClellan didn't do anything despite knowing (or at the very least suspecting corruption and dishonesty) as well as why McClellan won't disavow the GOP.
All in all, though, his rationales are plausible, and that's what makes the book work. In the Bush Administration, it's easy to envision Cheney and Rove, for example, viewing McClellan as a nobody, a mouthpiece, and therefore it wouldn't matter if they lied to him about revealing the identity/cover of a covert CIA operative; to them, it was just business, not personal. Only their 'business' made him a liar and Scooter Libby a perjurer.
It's hard for me to read this stuff, looking around at the newspapers at the problems with the economy and the war this Administration has wrought, knowing McClellan for all his belated honesty and analysis is likely doing just fine financially - not only from his cushy job as White House spokesperson, but also from his book deal. But another part of me sees that he was, like many Americans, duped by this Administration. Should he have seen the signs? The answer is: Possibly. Maybe even probably, but many of us didn't either. (Personally, I wasn't ever in support of the Bush Administration, but many fine, upstanding, intelligent and intellectual friends of mine were...)
Still, it makes for compelling reading and the book maintains a decent pace; it slows a bit just past the halfway mark, but I didn't half wonder if that's because we already know the story, we already know how it ends. And by the mid of the book, he's done revealing his 'insider' knowledge and reverts to speculation. I don't know about you, but I'm sick of speculation. Between the punditry, and the news media, and the weekend political shows, I've had my fill of what people "think"; what I want to know is what are they doing to *do* about it. Scott offers few answers here, but it was heartening, if empty, to see he was willing to testify before the Senate - even if he essentially said, well, nothing.
This book isn't Earth-shattering, but it did give me a lot of insight into how the mind of George W. Bush works; there was a time where I thought that might be of little value. But as it seems the man is unlikely to be impeached, and will leave office fairly unscathed except in reputation, I think differently now. I want to know what he thinks and how he thinks, so that in judging future candidates if I see a similar pattern I can avoid it like the plague and spare this country unnecessary grief and suffering.
All in all, though, his rationales are plausible, and that's what makes the book work. In the Bush Administration, it's easy to envision Cheney and Rove, for example, viewing McClellan as a nobody, a mouthpiece, and therefore it wouldn't matter if they lied to him about revealing the identity/cover of a covert CIA operative; to them, it was just business, not personal. Only their 'business' made him a liar and Scooter Libby a perjurer.
It's hard for me to read this stuff, looking around at the newspapers at the problems with the economy and the war this Administration has wrought, knowing McClellan for all his belated honesty and analysis is likely doing just fine financially - not only from his cushy job as White House spokesperson, but also from his book deal. But another part of me sees that he was, like many Americans, duped by this Administration. Should he have seen the signs? The answer is: Possibly. Maybe even probably, but many of us didn't either. (Personally, I wasn't ever in support of the Bush Administration, but many fine, upstanding, intelligent and intellectual friends of mine were...)
Still, it makes for compelling reading and the book maintains a decent pace; it slows a bit just past the halfway mark, but I didn't half wonder if that's because we already know the story, we already know how it ends. And by the mid of the book, he's done revealing his 'insider' knowledge and reverts to speculation. I don't know about you, but I'm sick of speculation. Between the punditry, and the news media, and the weekend political shows, I've had my fill of what people "think"; what I want to know is what are they doing to *do* about it. Scott offers few answers here, but it was heartening, if empty, to see he was willing to testify before the Senate - even if he essentially said, well, nothing.
This book isn't Earth-shattering, but it did give me a lot of insight into how the mind of George W. Bush works; there was a time where I thought that might be of little value. But as it seems the man is unlikely to be impeached, and will leave office fairly unscathed except in reputation, I think differently now. I want to know what he thinks and how he thinks, so that in judging future candidates if I see a similar pattern I can avoid it like the plague and spare this country unnecessary grief and suffering.
September 25, 2008
I had heard so much about this book, but it was taking its time making it up to the top of my stack. I found it fascinating to walk through the recent events from Scott McClellan's eyes. To find out what he said he knew when he said he knew it. To hear what he believes about each of the participants in the events. It was interesting to me to see how he views President Bush now compared to how he viewed him before going to Washington with him. His comments on Dr. Condi Rice were really enlightening. I never dreamed that anyone would think things about her. I enjoyed how he wrote about how the White House works and the interactions with the press. I just wish he would have went into the media personalities like Chris Matthews, David Gregory, Helen Thomas, Andrea Mitchell and Jonathan Alter. I would have liked more details on the day to day work and also about 9/11 and the meetings afterwards. I didn't find this book to be extremely political. In my opinion, I didn't think he was slamming the Republicans. Mr. McClellan was very protective of them. I would recommend this book to anyone looking for some insight into the White House.
July 13, 2008
It seriously takes a crappy book for me to not finish a book (I like to finish a book no matter how difficult it is to get through.) Now, the preface in this book is fantastic. It got me all rowled up. (Is that the right word: rowled?) I thought this book would be very interesting, and I guess a little part of it was. I wanted to get the scoop from a true insider. Someone who really was in the thick of it all. The problem with this book is when he blabs on and on about idealistic politics, his fabulous upbringing, and his own thoughts. It is lame. I wanted the dirt! It seemed like the real purpose of him writing this book was to make himself feel liked and be able to sleep at night. Not recommended.
May 21, 2024
A textbook for how not to be president.
If you are ever pitying yourself because of your crappy job or because you work with a bunch of loathsome sociopaths, Scott McClellan’s book will likely make you feel better about your own situation. Few jobs could be worse than being George W. Bush’s Press Secretary, defending inanely counter-productive policies and wars of an imbecile president, and lorded over by cynical, self-serving liars like Karl Rove and Dick Cheney.
What Happened is a journalistic memoir by Scott McClellan of the events during the first term of the George W. Bush presidency. McClellan’s jumping off point is the felonious outing of CIA operative Valerie Plame by senior White House aide Scooter Libby (and probably Karl Rove, too.) McClellan was the public face of the administration, fielding questions and dealing with the press during that tumultuous time. Behind the scenes McClellan documents the several times that top Bush and Cheney officials lied to him about their involvement which often put the Press Secretary in difficult situations.
McClellan portrays himself as a loyal Texan who came to Washington to serve his president and the American people in whatever capacity he could. He details the notion of the “permanent campaign” whereby politicos must continually make their case to the press and public in order to enact any policy changes in Washington. He decries the cynical culture of “gotcha” reporting and the constant prevarication and propaganda doled out by partisan pols.
McClellan came to DC as Deputy White House Press Secretary under Ari Fleischer and the Bush White House was immediately embroiled in controversy surrounding the contested election results in 2000. Of course, then the tragedy of 9-11 soon took center stage followed by the Afghan invasion and the run-up to the Iraq war. McClellan is quite candid in his assessment of Bush’s and Cheney’s preconceived plan to invade Iraq, with discussions taking place even before 9-11.
Once the World Trade Centers fell with thousands killed and the country was further panicked by anthrax attacks through the US mail that resulted in more death, our national innocence was lost. Was constant fear the new normal? Afghanistan was invaded because they were either unwilling or unable to immediately turn over Osama bin Laden, and the Taliban was barely scattered when the public debate was overtaken by talk of the “grave and gathering danger” of Saddam Hussein-- with the disingenuous prospect of WMD and fear mongering with talk of mushroom clouds.
McClellan gives clear chapter and verse how the Iraqi threat was overplayed and fear was stoked to achieve consensus to attack Saddam Hussein. National Intelligence Estimates were unclear about the exact capabilities of Hussein’s WMD programs, which merited the re-implementation of the weapons inspections regime. [Hillary Clinton backed the president and voted for inspections during this heightened time. The only way to ensure Saddam Hussein would comply was to have a broad bipartisan consensus calling for inspections and attaching a military threat if he did not cooperate.]
During this time, the Bush administration was also making the bold but false claim that Iraq was seeking uranium to use in a nuclear weapon: the famous yellow cake from Niger. This is where the Valerie Plame felony all started. Joseph Wilson, a former US diplomat, was sent to Niger in February 2002 by the CIA to investigate the claim that Niger was approached by Saddam Hussein for the acquisition of yellow cake uranium. There was no validity to the claim and this was reported back to the CIA not to embarrass anyone but rather to help the Bush administration avoid a grievous error.
Regardless, George W. Bush included the false claim in his January 2003 State of the Union address with the infamous 16 words: "The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa." This was a lie, based on known forged documents, and it was perfectly timed prior to the planned invasion of Iraq in March. Shortly after Bush’s address, Joe Wilson penned an op-ed calling bullshit on the claim, thus putting the Bush White House in a tricky situation.
The invasion of Iraq went off anyway when the president prematurely called off the inspections in preparation for military invasion, against the advice of the UN weapons inspectors and Secretary General Kofi Annan. David Kay, Bush’s appointed inspector, said that there was 100% chance that we would find WMD’s in Iraq. He later resigned in disgrace, admitting that he was mistaken after the US’ 1400-person inspection force could find nothing.
McClellan relates a poignant story after the US had overtaken Baghdad and was setting up the green zone. Kofi Annan offered Bush a UN special representative to help oversee the rebuilding of Iraq with the recommendation of Sergio Vieira de Mello, a superstar in world diplomacy who was being groomed to be the future Secretary General of the UN. This was designed as an olive branch from Annan and to give the US an imprimatur of respectability going forward. After meeting with Annan, Bush expressed his disdain for him as a “weak leader” because of the diplomatic offer, which took McClellan off-guard as an inappropriate sentiment by Bush at the time.
The mission by de Mello began in the summer of 2003 and was to last four months giving the US occupation an international representation and some semblance of legitimacy. However, de Mello was killed under US protection along with 21 other diplomats in the tragic Canal Hotel bombing masterminded by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. [Remember the half dozen or so congressional investigations about how the Bush administration and Secretary of State Colin Powell screwed up and were to blame for this attack just like Hillary Clinton was to blame for the Benghazi attack a decade later? No? That’s right, because there were no such investigations in 2003. That was before political grandstanding impeded and obstructed our foreign policy.] The irony is staggering of the self-described “strong leader” Bush being unable to protect the diplomatic mission offered so magnanimously by “weak leader” Annan, done to add legitimacy to Bush's idiotic war which Annan had warned against...and then it ends in the worst way possible.
In the ensuing months and internal investigations, a speechwriter was thrown under the bus for the the “16 words” fiasco. And then, in apparent retribution to Joe Wilson who did nothing but attempt to warn off the Bush administration from making a stupendous error by invading Iraq, the identification of Wilson's wife Valerie Plame as a CIA operative was made public, thus ending her career and possibly endangering any covert contacts she may have had in Asia and elsewhere. This was a felony. Who did it?
Annan, Wilson, Plame, de Mello, and 21 other diplomats were only the most well-known individuals whose lives were altered or ended because they tried to legitimize Bush’s illegitimate policy. Everything and everybody Bush touched turned to crap.
McClellan goes into weekly and even daily blow-by-blow detail of the Dept of Justice investigation, the hiring of a special counsel, the grand jury hearings and the eventual trial and felony conviction of Cheney’s chief of staff Scooter Libby for disclosing Valerie Plame’s identity as a CIA agent. All the while, McClellan was repeatedly lied to and kept in the dark by his bosses and co-workers, at one point fearing that he himself could be in legal jeopardy.
After Bush’s re-election McClellan was taken aback at the hubris expressed by the president. Despite winning by the narrowest margin of an incumbent in recent history, Bush doubled down on his plan to privatize Social Security (which eventually failed.)
With the hiring of Josh Bolton as Chief of Staff, McClellan was replaced, thus ending his 5-year tenure as press secretary. Despite anger and disappointment voiced by his wife, McClellan understood the vicissitudes of the DC world and was relieved to be leaving the White House. He held respect for the president but the last chapters entailed McClellan’s prescription for fixing the broken “permanent campaign” mentality in DC.
He calls for a new cabinet position, Deputy Chief of Staff for Governance, whose responsibility it would be to engender bipartisan unity, ensuring that beneficial policies can be formulated that are favored by both parties and eliminating the political in-fighting. He or she would also keep a check on the political operatives within the White House to ensure that they did not obstruct governance.
This is where I found McClellan’s thesis strained. McClellan also admonished citizens to be more aware of the “permanent campaign” and the destructive nature of constant partisan posturing. My problem here is that McClellan was a citizen working in the crucible, much more knowledgeable about the events occurring right before his eyes and he did nothing. There were plenty of us in the hinterlands who were working 40-hours at real jobs yet still could see that the Iraq war was hastily waged and the occupation was mismanaged. McClellan said nothing while we were screaming and protesting in the streets, yet McClellan says the citizens were derelict.
McClellan saw hundreds of thousands of civilians killed in “shock and awe” and millions scattered into refugee camps after Cheney and his crew sugar-coated the war, yet the Press Secretary marched out every day to defend and explain the administration position without any apparent critical thought. I appreciate that he has come clean now and written this indictment of his former bosses, but I find the book extremely frustrating. It seems that he came out to cleanse his conscience and reputation but did nothing at the time when it might have made a material difference. He admits that he never challenged the Rumsfeld-Cheney-Wolfowitz consensus while he took a taxpayer-funded salary and sat in meetings every damn day. He sounds contrite now, but for me it’s too little too late.
McClellan remarks how Condoleezza Rice seemed immune to criticism and even to this day she seems to have escaped any culpability for disastrous outcomes while she held senior White House and foreign affairs offices. McClellan also expresses dismay that despite Scooter Libby being convicted at trial of obstruction of justice and omission of evidence over the disclosure of Valerie Plame’s identity, he never served a minute in prison because President Bush commuted his sentence. McClellan, to his credit, correctly identifies this as an example of special treatment of a political operative, a cynical ploy that damages the public’s confidence in government.
McClellan’s book is not literature but it is well-written in a journalistic style which lends a raw honesty about the facts and his feelings. This book is educational regarding the day-to-day functioning of an albeit dysfunctional White House.
McClellan confirms almost every one of my dire conclusions about the constant cynical prevarication that was emblematic of the Bush-Cheney administration. They lied and obfuscated not just about health insurance reform or some minor policy tweak but about war and sending kids into a shredder from which tens of thousands US soldiers emerged damaged or dead. The administration attentively orchestrated the message, what McClellan terms propaganda. They eschewed national debate and did everything in their power to silence critics, exaggerating the threat of WMDs and nuclear weapons while being pollyannish about the ease with which Iraq would be rebuilt and the US would be greeted as liberators with oil flowing and regional peace being established.
McClellan did the respectable and patriotic thing by writing this book. He could have retired to a Texas bungalow to paint pictures of his dog but instead he came forward with a carefully crafted memoir detailing the damning events surrounding the devastation of Cheney's foreign policy, damage that will likely affect us for generations. The Iraq war failure reduces our effectiveness as a nation in every interaction. Bush’s testosterone fueled idea of “strong leadership” cost us trillions of dollars and invaluable reputation.
Very sad.
If you are ever pitying yourself because of your crappy job or because you work with a bunch of loathsome sociopaths, Scott McClellan’s book will likely make you feel better about your own situation. Few jobs could be worse than being George W. Bush’s Press Secretary, defending inanely counter-productive policies and wars of an imbecile president, and lorded over by cynical, self-serving liars like Karl Rove and Dick Cheney.
What Happened is a journalistic memoir by Scott McClellan of the events during the first term of the George W. Bush presidency. McClellan’s jumping off point is the felonious outing of CIA operative Valerie Plame by senior White House aide Scooter Libby (and probably Karl Rove, too.) McClellan was the public face of the administration, fielding questions and dealing with the press during that tumultuous time. Behind the scenes McClellan documents the several times that top Bush and Cheney officials lied to him about their involvement which often put the Press Secretary in difficult situations.
McClellan portrays himself as a loyal Texan who came to Washington to serve his president and the American people in whatever capacity he could. He details the notion of the “permanent campaign” whereby politicos must continually make their case to the press and public in order to enact any policy changes in Washington. He decries the cynical culture of “gotcha” reporting and the constant prevarication and propaganda doled out by partisan pols.
McClellan came to DC as Deputy White House Press Secretary under Ari Fleischer and the Bush White House was immediately embroiled in controversy surrounding the contested election results in 2000. Of course, then the tragedy of 9-11 soon took center stage followed by the Afghan invasion and the run-up to the Iraq war. McClellan is quite candid in his assessment of Bush’s and Cheney’s preconceived plan to invade Iraq, with discussions taking place even before 9-11.
Once the World Trade Centers fell with thousands killed and the country was further panicked by anthrax attacks through the US mail that resulted in more death, our national innocence was lost. Was constant fear the new normal? Afghanistan was invaded because they were either unwilling or unable to immediately turn over Osama bin Laden, and the Taliban was barely scattered when the public debate was overtaken by talk of the “grave and gathering danger” of Saddam Hussein-- with the disingenuous prospect of WMD and fear mongering with talk of mushroom clouds.
McClellan gives clear chapter and verse how the Iraqi threat was overplayed and fear was stoked to achieve consensus to attack Saddam Hussein. National Intelligence Estimates were unclear about the exact capabilities of Hussein’s WMD programs, which merited the re-implementation of the weapons inspections regime. [Hillary Clinton backed the president and voted for inspections during this heightened time. The only way to ensure Saddam Hussein would comply was to have a broad bipartisan consensus calling for inspections and attaching a military threat if he did not cooperate.]
During this time, the Bush administration was also making the bold but false claim that Iraq was seeking uranium to use in a nuclear weapon: the famous yellow cake from Niger. This is where the Valerie Plame felony all started. Joseph Wilson, a former US diplomat, was sent to Niger in February 2002 by the CIA to investigate the claim that Niger was approached by Saddam Hussein for the acquisition of yellow cake uranium. There was no validity to the claim and this was reported back to the CIA not to embarrass anyone but rather to help the Bush administration avoid a grievous error.
Regardless, George W. Bush included the false claim in his January 2003 State of the Union address with the infamous 16 words: "The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa." This was a lie, based on known forged documents, and it was perfectly timed prior to the planned invasion of Iraq in March. Shortly after Bush’s address, Joe Wilson penned an op-ed calling bullshit on the claim, thus putting the Bush White House in a tricky situation.
The invasion of Iraq went off anyway when the president prematurely called off the inspections in preparation for military invasion, against the advice of the UN weapons inspectors and Secretary General Kofi Annan. David Kay, Bush’s appointed inspector, said that there was 100% chance that we would find WMD’s in Iraq. He later resigned in disgrace, admitting that he was mistaken after the US’ 1400-person inspection force could find nothing.
McClellan relates a poignant story after the US had overtaken Baghdad and was setting up the green zone. Kofi Annan offered Bush a UN special representative to help oversee the rebuilding of Iraq with the recommendation of Sergio Vieira de Mello, a superstar in world diplomacy who was being groomed to be the future Secretary General of the UN. This was designed as an olive branch from Annan and to give the US an imprimatur of respectability going forward. After meeting with Annan, Bush expressed his disdain for him as a “weak leader” because of the diplomatic offer, which took McClellan off-guard as an inappropriate sentiment by Bush at the time.
The mission by de Mello began in the summer of 2003 and was to last four months giving the US occupation an international representation and some semblance of legitimacy. However, de Mello was killed under US protection along with 21 other diplomats in the tragic Canal Hotel bombing masterminded by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. [Remember the half dozen or so congressional investigations about how the Bush administration and Secretary of State Colin Powell screwed up and were to blame for this attack just like Hillary Clinton was to blame for the Benghazi attack a decade later? No? That’s right, because there were no such investigations in 2003. That was before political grandstanding impeded and obstructed our foreign policy.] The irony is staggering of the self-described “strong leader” Bush being unable to protect the diplomatic mission offered so magnanimously by “weak leader” Annan, done to add legitimacy to Bush's idiotic war which Annan had warned against...and then it ends in the worst way possible.
In the ensuing months and internal investigations, a speechwriter was thrown under the bus for the the “16 words” fiasco. And then, in apparent retribution to Joe Wilson who did nothing but attempt to warn off the Bush administration from making a stupendous error by invading Iraq, the identification of Wilson's wife Valerie Plame as a CIA operative was made public, thus ending her career and possibly endangering any covert contacts she may have had in Asia and elsewhere. This was a felony. Who did it?
Annan, Wilson, Plame, de Mello, and 21 other diplomats were only the most well-known individuals whose lives were altered or ended because they tried to legitimize Bush’s illegitimate policy. Everything and everybody Bush touched turned to crap.
McClellan goes into weekly and even daily blow-by-blow detail of the Dept of Justice investigation, the hiring of a special counsel, the grand jury hearings and the eventual trial and felony conviction of Cheney’s chief of staff Scooter Libby for disclosing Valerie Plame’s identity as a CIA agent. All the while, McClellan was repeatedly lied to and kept in the dark by his bosses and co-workers, at one point fearing that he himself could be in legal jeopardy.
After Bush’s re-election McClellan was taken aback at the hubris expressed by the president. Despite winning by the narrowest margin of an incumbent in recent history, Bush doubled down on his plan to privatize Social Security (which eventually failed.)
With the hiring of Josh Bolton as Chief of Staff, McClellan was replaced, thus ending his 5-year tenure as press secretary. Despite anger and disappointment voiced by his wife, McClellan understood the vicissitudes of the DC world and was relieved to be leaving the White House. He held respect for the president but the last chapters entailed McClellan’s prescription for fixing the broken “permanent campaign” mentality in DC.
He calls for a new cabinet position, Deputy Chief of Staff for Governance, whose responsibility it would be to engender bipartisan unity, ensuring that beneficial policies can be formulated that are favored by both parties and eliminating the political in-fighting. He or she would also keep a check on the political operatives within the White House to ensure that they did not obstruct governance.
This is where I found McClellan’s thesis strained. McClellan also admonished citizens to be more aware of the “permanent campaign” and the destructive nature of constant partisan posturing. My problem here is that McClellan was a citizen working in the crucible, much more knowledgeable about the events occurring right before his eyes and he did nothing. There were plenty of us in the hinterlands who were working 40-hours at real jobs yet still could see that the Iraq war was hastily waged and the occupation was mismanaged. McClellan said nothing while we were screaming and protesting in the streets, yet McClellan says the citizens were derelict.
McClellan saw hundreds of thousands of civilians killed in “shock and awe” and millions scattered into refugee camps after Cheney and his crew sugar-coated the war, yet the Press Secretary marched out every day to defend and explain the administration position without any apparent critical thought. I appreciate that he has come clean now and written this indictment of his former bosses, but I find the book extremely frustrating. It seems that he came out to cleanse his conscience and reputation but did nothing at the time when it might have made a material difference. He admits that he never challenged the Rumsfeld-Cheney-Wolfowitz consensus while he took a taxpayer-funded salary and sat in meetings every damn day. He sounds contrite now, but for me it’s too little too late.
McClellan remarks how Condoleezza Rice seemed immune to criticism and even to this day she seems to have escaped any culpability for disastrous outcomes while she held senior White House and foreign affairs offices. McClellan also expresses dismay that despite Scooter Libby being convicted at trial of obstruction of justice and omission of evidence over the disclosure of Valerie Plame’s identity, he never served a minute in prison because President Bush commuted his sentence. McClellan, to his credit, correctly identifies this as an example of special treatment of a political operative, a cynical ploy that damages the public’s confidence in government.
McClellan’s book is not literature but it is well-written in a journalistic style which lends a raw honesty about the facts and his feelings. This book is educational regarding the day-to-day functioning of an albeit dysfunctional White House.
McClellan confirms almost every one of my dire conclusions about the constant cynical prevarication that was emblematic of the Bush-Cheney administration. They lied and obfuscated not just about health insurance reform or some minor policy tweak but about war and sending kids into a shredder from which tens of thousands US soldiers emerged damaged or dead. The administration attentively orchestrated the message, what McClellan terms propaganda. They eschewed national debate and did everything in their power to silence critics, exaggerating the threat of WMDs and nuclear weapons while being pollyannish about the ease with which Iraq would be rebuilt and the US would be greeted as liberators with oil flowing and regional peace being established.
McClellan did the respectable and patriotic thing by writing this book. He could have retired to a Texas bungalow to paint pictures of his dog but instead he came forward with a carefully crafted memoir detailing the damning events surrounding the devastation of Cheney's foreign policy, damage that will likely affect us for generations. The Iraq war failure reduces our effectiveness as a nation in every interaction. Bush’s testosterone fueled idea of “strong leadership” cost us trillions of dollars and invaluable reputation.
Very sad.
October 29, 2012
Okay, we all bought this book to find out if someone who's been on the inside of the big opaque white box would confirm what we all suspected, or give us someone to tar and feather if we're prone to unquestioning partisan loyalties. Although there is some 3-star unevenness early in the book, I have to say the best part is the final chapter, "Changing the Culture of Deception," and that alone is what earns my 5-star review.
Most of the book is a narrative of Scott McClellan's schooling in politics at his mother's knee and how he wound up being an inner-circle Bush loyalist, dedicated to what he thought were the high ideals of principled people dedicated to public service--only to be blindsided and thrown under the bus in a cruel, expedient way. We saw it on his face at the time, and now we get the backstory: the man's heart was chewed up and spit out like a chaw of Texas tobacco, yet still to the very end he finds it within himself to give Bush the benefit of the doubt and to do what he felt was best for the larger good.
In the final chapter, though, we get the benefit of McClellan's hindsight and his in-depth reflections on how he believes we can transmute what happened into positive change and good governance--or what can happen next. This is a beautifully written, wise chapter. As I was reading it, I kept thinking "Barack Obama, I hope you are reading this. John McCain, I hope you are reading this. Leaders of Congress and The Media, I hope you are reading this. My fellow Americans, who love this country as much as I do and dare hope it's not too late to avoid our irreparable decline and death as a nation, I hope you are reading this."
Please buy or borrow this book before the November elections and read the final chapter, even if you don't read the rest of the book. Then go to the polls and vote for the presidential, Congressional, and state-level candidates that you have assessed are most likely to try to rise to the challenge McClellan has thrown out to all of us. If you do, maybe there is hope for America after all.
The Kindle edition, by the way, is well-formatted and readable. I feel compelled to mention this because some Kindle editions of books I've bought have had formatting problems that made them hard to read.
Most of the book is a narrative of Scott McClellan's schooling in politics at his mother's knee and how he wound up being an inner-circle Bush loyalist, dedicated to what he thought were the high ideals of principled people dedicated to public service--only to be blindsided and thrown under the bus in a cruel, expedient way. We saw it on his face at the time, and now we get the backstory: the man's heart was chewed up and spit out like a chaw of Texas tobacco, yet still to the very end he finds it within himself to give Bush the benefit of the doubt and to do what he felt was best for the larger good.
In the final chapter, though, we get the benefit of McClellan's hindsight and his in-depth reflections on how he believes we can transmute what happened into positive change and good governance--or what can happen next. This is a beautifully written, wise chapter. As I was reading it, I kept thinking "Barack Obama, I hope you are reading this. John McCain, I hope you are reading this. Leaders of Congress and The Media, I hope you are reading this. My fellow Americans, who love this country as much as I do and dare hope it's not too late to avoid our irreparable decline and death as a nation, I hope you are reading this."
Please buy or borrow this book before the November elections and read the final chapter, even if you don't read the rest of the book. Then go to the polls and vote for the presidential, Congressional, and state-level candidates that you have assessed are most likely to try to rise to the challenge McClellan has thrown out to all of us. If you do, maybe there is hope for America after all.
The Kindle edition, by the way, is well-formatted and readable. I feel compelled to mention this because some Kindle editions of books I've bought have had formatting problems that made them hard to read.
July 8, 2008
There are plenty of books out there critical of Bush and his adminstration [ e.g., books like Chandrasekaran's "Imperial Life in the Emerald City", or Corn's & Isikoffs "Hubris", Hersh's "Chain of Command", Rick's "Fiasco", Unger's "House of Bush, House of Saud", Woodward" "Bush at War", "Plan of Attack", or "State of Denial", Suskind's "The Price of Loyalty", etc.] It's not really true, but one might dismiss them as being written by liberal Democrats or political outsiders. Harder to dismiss are those written by ex members of the Bush team, like former EPA Administrators Christine Todd Whitman's book "It's My Party", former terrorism advisor Richard Clark's book, former CIA head George Tenant's book, etc.]. Here's another ex-Bush insider who is saying the same thing - Bush didn't do a very good job overall. I believe it was the same Scott McClellan who dismissed some of these earlier books as "sour grapes", or just someone trying to make a buck once outside the administration, it's amusing that the same is being said of him and his book.
But repeated enough times by many former insiders, you have to start believing the common theme. McClellan's book actually is the kindest of Bush of them all in my opinion. He doesn't seem to be condemning Bush as much as the way politics is played, especially in Washington. McClellan seems to give Bush the benefit of the doubt in many areas, and still believes he's a decent caring man. Instead, he blames the policical atmosphere in general, and the likes of Rove, Cheney, and other key advisors for the problems in the current administration. My impression, by the time I finished the book, was there really wasn't much new here, and McClellan's main gripe was personal, e.g., he was misled by Rove, Libby, and others about who leaked inside information about a CIA agent to the press for political reasons, and ended up being caught himself in an inadvertent lie to the press. My feeling is that he simply wanted to get his side of the story out there, clear his name, and not specifically to bash Bush any more than has already been done.
But repeated enough times by many former insiders, you have to start believing the common theme. McClellan's book actually is the kindest of Bush of them all in my opinion. He doesn't seem to be condemning Bush as much as the way politics is played, especially in Washington. McClellan seems to give Bush the benefit of the doubt in many areas, and still believes he's a decent caring man. Instead, he blames the policical atmosphere in general, and the likes of Rove, Cheney, and other key advisors for the problems in the current administration. My impression, by the time I finished the book, was there really wasn't much new here, and McClellan's main gripe was personal, e.g., he was misled by Rove, Libby, and others about who leaked inside information about a CIA agent to the press for political reasons, and ended up being caught himself in an inadvertent lie to the press. My feeling is that he simply wanted to get his side of the story out there, clear his name, and not specifically to bash Bush any more than has already been done.
June 9, 2008
So exciting! I normally read the conservatives at the library, so my consumer dollars won't fund their destruction of my country - that should tell you which side I'm coming from. This one, I BOUGHT! I make this offer to any Bushie who wants to roll over and tell the truth - I will buy your book! (David Kuo, I will grandfather you in)
Mr. McClellan started off kinda rocky; he gives us a background story about difficulties he experienced as head of his fraternity... and cites these as a lesson that will be useful for anyone who wants to restructure Washington politics. Ok, Frat Boy. Then he says that the Bush Administration went in with the best of intentions, but the Clinton administration had poisoned the waters with its permanent campaigning. He says that he is not laying blame on any one party... then he does.
But after he starts talking about first hand experience, things get pretty juicy. He rips into Karl Rove, Scooter Libby, Condi Rice and whereas he clearly wants to withhold direct blame from Bush, he savages him with pop-psych analysis and retrospectively hollow declarations of faith. Yummy stuff! He notably spares Ari Fleischer and Andy Card, and the White House press core. Considering his premise of the dangers of governing from a campaign mindset, he is clearly also sparing Alberto Gonzales - the best argument he could have made to support his premise would be the politicizing of the AG's office and the subsequent backlash.
The third and final portion of the book, his recommendations for the future, are rather painful to read and poorly fleshed out. Lots of jabs at the Clinton's, an proposed extension of the executive staff to be in charge of the morality of the operation, and a general resistance to policy changes. Skip it.
After you read it, it has the air of inevitability. If you are going to be a corrupt administration, don't hire a wide-eyed, true believer to do your spin. Or at least, don't betray him.
Mr. McClellan started off kinda rocky; he gives us a background story about difficulties he experienced as head of his fraternity... and cites these as a lesson that will be useful for anyone who wants to restructure Washington politics. Ok, Frat Boy. Then he says that the Bush Administration went in with the best of intentions, but the Clinton administration had poisoned the waters with its permanent campaigning. He says that he is not laying blame on any one party... then he does.
But after he starts talking about first hand experience, things get pretty juicy. He rips into Karl Rove, Scooter Libby, Condi Rice and whereas he clearly wants to withhold direct blame from Bush, he savages him with pop-psych analysis and retrospectively hollow declarations of faith. Yummy stuff! He notably spares Ari Fleischer and Andy Card, and the White House press core. Considering his premise of the dangers of governing from a campaign mindset, he is clearly also sparing Alberto Gonzales - the best argument he could have made to support his premise would be the politicizing of the AG's office and the subsequent backlash.
The third and final portion of the book, his recommendations for the future, are rather painful to read and poorly fleshed out. Lots of jabs at the Clinton's, an proposed extension of the executive staff to be in charge of the morality of the operation, and a general resistance to policy changes. Skip it.
After you read it, it has the air of inevitability. If you are going to be a corrupt administration, don't hire a wide-eyed, true believer to do your spin. Or at least, don't betray him.
August 5, 2008
Forget how smug he was at press briefings. Forget how he was a puppet and mouthpiece for all the bad decisions of the Bush administration. For me, these are givens, like saying a croissant tastes nice or summer is pleasant.
McClellan doesn't tell us anything we didn't already know - not really - in spirit if not in detail.
But what really annoys me about this book is that an editor somewhere let it go out in such bad condition? I get the man's not a writer, but jeez. You'd figure a press secretary would know how to paint a picture instead of pontificate, justify and try to make himself look good where looking good is not really an option.
Bad, colorless, uninteresting writing. He wastes SO many opportunities to draw readers in and give us an experience of what it's like to be in that pressure-cooker environment. He is unoriginal, impressed with himself and intellectually dishonest.
I gave him two stars instead of one because there is a prurient sort of interest in reading what a former supporter now says about decisions of the Bush administration. But it leaves you with a bad taste in your mouth, like the other team's ball boy swiping their playbook for you. You want to read it, but you want to think you're better than that too.
McClellan doesn't tell us anything we didn't already know - not really - in spirit if not in detail.
But what really annoys me about this book is that an editor somewhere let it go out in such bad condition? I get the man's not a writer, but jeez. You'd figure a press secretary would know how to paint a picture instead of pontificate, justify and try to make himself look good where looking good is not really an option.
Bad, colorless, uninteresting writing. He wastes SO many opportunities to draw readers in and give us an experience of what it's like to be in that pressure-cooker environment. He is unoriginal, impressed with himself and intellectually dishonest.
I gave him two stars instead of one because there is a prurient sort of interest in reading what a former supporter now says about decisions of the Bush administration. But it leaves you with a bad taste in your mouth, like the other team's ball boy swiping their playbook for you. You want to read it, but you want to think you're better than that too.
June 6, 2016
Definitely a well-written and insightful book. It makes you see what went wrong during the Bush presidency from the standpoint of someone who was there the entire time and witnessing the decisions as the president made them. I found it to be a great read and enjoyed every page.
May 25, 2011
I put this book in the Goodwill box yesterday with out finishing it. Scott's finger pointing, I'm so innocent spiel was just pissing me off.
Hey Scott - no one believes you.
Hey Scott - no one believes you.
January 19, 2016
It's an election year, and one that promises to be very interesting, to say the least. In preparation, I've resurrected and, in some cases, polished some of my book reviews dealing with politics in general. I read this book back in 2012. My views on Bush/Cheney have not changed. In some ways, they are less vitriolic, but with each new bit of news that surfaces that reveals how corrupt Bush/Cheney truly were, my disgust for them continues to grow.
Scott McClellan was Deputy White House Press Secretary during President George W. Bush's first term and later became White House Press Secretary until retiring in 2006. In those six years, McClellan was privy to meetings, memos, and conversations that the general public was not, during a decade that was historic for many reasons and inside an administration that was arguably the most controversial one in a century.
In his book "What Happened", McClellan attempts to sort out (mainly for himself) the mixed feelings of loyalty, respect, betrayal, and anger he felt towards the Bush Administration and for George W. Bush personally. What is most enlightening about McClellan's book is his portrayal of Bush as a decent human being but a very flawed president, brought down by an entourage of bad advice-givers and an incapacity to acknowledge mistakes made.
McClellan's respectful human portrayal of Bush is admirable, but as someone who did not vote for Bush (either time) and feels that Bush has left a legacy of incompetence, deception, and anti-Americanism in many parts of the world, I would have liked to have seen a little more dirt. That's the ultra-liberal in me, I suppose. That, and the fact that McClellan's prose is a bit boring at times, are petty and selfish complaints, I acknowledge. There is still some pretty juicy stuff in this book.
The three main "events" McClellan deems important enough to focus on in terms of when the Bush Administration went astray, to say the least, were the Iraq War, the Valerie Plame controversy, and Hurricane Katrina.
He spends a good majority of the book on the Iraq War and the fateful "sixteen words" controversy that haunted Bush for years after the U.S. was embroiled in a war that the average American, according to most polls, basically didn't think was necessary.
What are the "sixteen words"? During his State of the Union Address on Jan. 28, 2003, President Bush referred to an intelligence report about an Iraqi attempt to buy yellowcake uranium (the stuff used to make nuclear weapons) from Nigeria. This bit of intel later turned out to be completely false, and many critics of the President used it as fuel to support a growing belief that Bush and his Administration were bold-facedly lying to the American people.
If Bush's alleged subterfuge was an attempt to rile the American public's support for a preemptive war with Iraq, it certainly succeeded. Of course, President Bush didn't purposely mislead the general public, according to a report that McClellan quotes from the nonpartisan Annenberg Political Fact Check, which stated that "what [Bush] said---that Iraq sought uranium---is just what both British and U.S. intelligence were telling him at the time. So Bush may indeed have been misinformed, but that's not the same as lying. (p.309)", but McClellan doesn't let Bush off that easily.
McClellan believes that the Bush Administration made an uncomfortable habit of mishandling intelligence during the build-up to the war, solely to win public favor. He writes that "the campaign mentality at times led the president and his chief advisors to spin, hide, shade, and exaggerate the truth, obscuring nuances and ignoring the caveats that should have accompanied their arguments. (p.309)" McClellan, at numerous times, writes about his hatred of the campaign mentality that seemed to take over the Bush Administration, himself included, and which he feels is responsible for the unfortunate incident that has become known as Plamegate.
In the summer of 2003, Ambassador Joe Wilson published an op-ed piece in The New York Times in which he accused the Bush Administration of misleading the public in regards to the Iraq War by using false information to support it.
The Pro-Bush retaliatory attacks were immediate. In regards to a fact-finding trip to Nigeria that Wilson made shortly after the infamous State of the Union Address, conservative journalist Robert Novak, in a July 14 column, insinuated that Wilson's trip was a suggestion made by Wilson's wife, Valerie Plame, a CIA operative. Novak also stated in his article that this was reported to him by "two senior administration officials".
The "outing" of a CIA operative in a news article is, in fact, a crime, a fact that the Justice Department picked up on immediately. During the subsequent investigation, Karl Rove and Scooter Libby were considered to be the two main suspects for the "two senior administration officials".
When McClellan asked both Rove and Libby about it, they both denied any involvement, which McClellan then stated during a press conference. Later, it was determined that Rove and Libby had released the leak. They had essentially lied to McClellan and thrown him under the bus when he publicly exonerated them, making him look like a liar. What's worse is when McClellan, during a closed-door meeting with President Bush, asked if Bush had authorized the leak of part of a National Intelligence Estimate (NIE), which included information used to discredit Wilson. Bush responded with a nonchalant "Yeah, I did." In essence, Bush had put someone's life and job in jeopardy for the sake of playing politics, a fact that McClellan could not reconcile.
Then came Hurricane Katrina, the icing on the cake for the undoing of the president, according to McClellan. Poor emergency preparations, an inability to adequately convey empathy for the victims, and the infamous "flyover" photo helped to make Katrina a debacle for the Bush Administration.
McClellan focuses too much time explaining the "flyover" photo of Bush looking out the window of Air Force One at the devastation of New Orleans, and he is quick to blame Rove for convincing Bush to do it in the first place.
Still, McClellan merely points out the glaring disconnect Bush seemed to have with the lower-class victims of the disaster, a disconnect that boneheads like Kanye West misinterpreted as a hatred of black people. Clearly, no rational person would insinuate that Bush had no feelings for the Katrina victims. The problem was Bush's lack of visibility during much of it. In the end, Bush came across as cold and distant, merely interested in solving a problem rather than expressing real concern and compassion.
Does McClellan conclude that Bush was a bad president? I think that, without actually coming out and saying it, McClellan clearly makes the case that, yes, Bush was a bad president.
McClellan ends the book with the typical save-your-ass "I still have respect for the man" type of statements, all well and good and to be expected from someone who had worked so long and so hard for a president that he believed in. But what is McClellan's take-away message? I think that it is, in fact, a defense of Bush's character.
If there are villains in this book, they are clearly Karl Rove, Scooter Libby, and Dick Cheney, whose "campaign mentality" rubbed off on an impressionable Bush and led to his downfall. As to Bush's image of a bumbling idiot, McClellan writes that "[t]he fact that he has been portrayed as not bright is unfortunate, but it's a result of his own mistakes---which could have been prevented had his beliefs been properly vetted and challenged by his top advisors."
I personally think McClellan is being too nice, and I understand the fact that he has to be. I still think Bush was a bad president, whose intellectual limitations (I won't say "stupidity" because I think the word is rude) and dishonesty with himself and the American people made him a bad president. I
think getting involved in the Iraq War was a travesty, and the fact that we have never heard (and will never hear) an apology out of Bush's mouth for getting us involved in a war that has resulted in so many wasted lives, American and Iraqi alike, is unforgivable.
Scott McClellan was Deputy White House Press Secretary during President George W. Bush's first term and later became White House Press Secretary until retiring in 2006. In those six years, McClellan was privy to meetings, memos, and conversations that the general public was not, during a decade that was historic for many reasons and inside an administration that was arguably the most controversial one in a century.
In his book "What Happened", McClellan attempts to sort out (mainly for himself) the mixed feelings of loyalty, respect, betrayal, and anger he felt towards the Bush Administration and for George W. Bush personally. What is most enlightening about McClellan's book is his portrayal of Bush as a decent human being but a very flawed president, brought down by an entourage of bad advice-givers and an incapacity to acknowledge mistakes made.
McClellan's respectful human portrayal of Bush is admirable, but as someone who did not vote for Bush (either time) and feels that Bush has left a legacy of incompetence, deception, and anti-Americanism in many parts of the world, I would have liked to have seen a little more dirt. That's the ultra-liberal in me, I suppose. That, and the fact that McClellan's prose is a bit boring at times, are petty and selfish complaints, I acknowledge. There is still some pretty juicy stuff in this book.
The three main "events" McClellan deems important enough to focus on in terms of when the Bush Administration went astray, to say the least, were the Iraq War, the Valerie Plame controversy, and Hurricane Katrina.
He spends a good majority of the book on the Iraq War and the fateful "sixteen words" controversy that haunted Bush for years after the U.S. was embroiled in a war that the average American, according to most polls, basically didn't think was necessary.
What are the "sixteen words"? During his State of the Union Address on Jan. 28, 2003, President Bush referred to an intelligence report about an Iraqi attempt to buy yellowcake uranium (the stuff used to make nuclear weapons) from Nigeria. This bit of intel later turned out to be completely false, and many critics of the President used it as fuel to support a growing belief that Bush and his Administration were bold-facedly lying to the American people.
If Bush's alleged subterfuge was an attempt to rile the American public's support for a preemptive war with Iraq, it certainly succeeded. Of course, President Bush didn't purposely mislead the general public, according to a report that McClellan quotes from the nonpartisan Annenberg Political Fact Check, which stated that "what [Bush] said---that Iraq sought uranium---is just what both British and U.S. intelligence were telling him at the time. So Bush may indeed have been misinformed, but that's not the same as lying. (p.309)", but McClellan doesn't let Bush off that easily.
McClellan believes that the Bush Administration made an uncomfortable habit of mishandling intelligence during the build-up to the war, solely to win public favor. He writes that "the campaign mentality at times led the president and his chief advisors to spin, hide, shade, and exaggerate the truth, obscuring nuances and ignoring the caveats that should have accompanied their arguments. (p.309)" McClellan, at numerous times, writes about his hatred of the campaign mentality that seemed to take over the Bush Administration, himself included, and which he feels is responsible for the unfortunate incident that has become known as Plamegate.
In the summer of 2003, Ambassador Joe Wilson published an op-ed piece in The New York Times in which he accused the Bush Administration of misleading the public in regards to the Iraq War by using false information to support it.
The Pro-Bush retaliatory attacks were immediate. In regards to a fact-finding trip to Nigeria that Wilson made shortly after the infamous State of the Union Address, conservative journalist Robert Novak, in a July 14 column, insinuated that Wilson's trip was a suggestion made by Wilson's wife, Valerie Plame, a CIA operative. Novak also stated in his article that this was reported to him by "two senior administration officials".
The "outing" of a CIA operative in a news article is, in fact, a crime, a fact that the Justice Department picked up on immediately. During the subsequent investigation, Karl Rove and Scooter Libby were considered to be the two main suspects for the "two senior administration officials".
When McClellan asked both Rove and Libby about it, they both denied any involvement, which McClellan then stated during a press conference. Later, it was determined that Rove and Libby had released the leak. They had essentially lied to McClellan and thrown him under the bus when he publicly exonerated them, making him look like a liar. What's worse is when McClellan, during a closed-door meeting with President Bush, asked if Bush had authorized the leak of part of a National Intelligence Estimate (NIE), which included information used to discredit Wilson. Bush responded with a nonchalant "Yeah, I did." In essence, Bush had put someone's life and job in jeopardy for the sake of playing politics, a fact that McClellan could not reconcile.
Then came Hurricane Katrina, the icing on the cake for the undoing of the president, according to McClellan. Poor emergency preparations, an inability to adequately convey empathy for the victims, and the infamous "flyover" photo helped to make Katrina a debacle for the Bush Administration.
McClellan focuses too much time explaining the "flyover" photo of Bush looking out the window of Air Force One at the devastation of New Orleans, and he is quick to blame Rove for convincing Bush to do it in the first place.
Still, McClellan merely points out the glaring disconnect Bush seemed to have with the lower-class victims of the disaster, a disconnect that boneheads like Kanye West misinterpreted as a hatred of black people. Clearly, no rational person would insinuate that Bush had no feelings for the Katrina victims. The problem was Bush's lack of visibility during much of it. In the end, Bush came across as cold and distant, merely interested in solving a problem rather than expressing real concern and compassion.
Does McClellan conclude that Bush was a bad president? I think that, without actually coming out and saying it, McClellan clearly makes the case that, yes, Bush was a bad president.
McClellan ends the book with the typical save-your-ass "I still have respect for the man" type of statements, all well and good and to be expected from someone who had worked so long and so hard for a president that he believed in. But what is McClellan's take-away message? I think that it is, in fact, a defense of Bush's character.
If there are villains in this book, they are clearly Karl Rove, Scooter Libby, and Dick Cheney, whose "campaign mentality" rubbed off on an impressionable Bush and led to his downfall. As to Bush's image of a bumbling idiot, McClellan writes that "[t]he fact that he has been portrayed as not bright is unfortunate, but it's a result of his own mistakes---which could have been prevented had his beliefs been properly vetted and challenged by his top advisors."
I personally think McClellan is being too nice, and I understand the fact that he has to be. I still think Bush was a bad president, whose intellectual limitations (I won't say "stupidity" because I think the word is rude) and dishonesty with himself and the American people made him a bad president. I
think getting involved in the Iraq War was a travesty, and the fact that we have never heard (and will never hear) an apology out of Bush's mouth for getting us involved in a war that has resulted in so many wasted lives, American and Iraqi alike, is unforgivable.
July 13, 2009
Oh, Scotty boy.
The book he wrote was ABOUT interesting things, and that's why it's got three stars. I also appreciated his general handling of Iraq - it made me think about the whole long-term implications of the region slightly differently. The writing style was mediocre. He tries to be a somewhat dispassionate narrator, but ends up just being mostly boring. I listened to it on audiobook, and Scott himself narrated it. His vocal style is very George W. Bush-esque, and that got a little grating.
But I think the main issue I had was the content. Scott tries to paint Bush as this bipartisan, honest Texas governor who got to the White House pledging to root out the political way DC runs, and was taken down by his advisers, some personality quirks, and the 'permanent campaign' of the Bush White House, Congress, and the press, who likes to 'pick on people.'
First - I'll trust Molly Ivans' interpretation of Governor Dubya over your wool-covered eyes, Scott. Bush was a horrible governor, who didn't have to do much, and what he did do, he made worse. Trying to whitewash him as this great leader is a convenient trope that allows you to set yourself up as a betrayed non-prodigal son later in the book. There's a reason more people voted for (then) boring old Al Gore than your amazing boss - he was awful then, and he was awful as President.
Second - DC takes many queues from how the White House is run. And how the people who work there interact with the press and the national constituency. You were part of that, and while you take some responsibility, there was nothing keeping you from speaking up at the meetings you say you felt you had to remain silent at, or going to the press back then.
Also - the national press's major fault is trying to find conflict in issues where there might not actually be conflict, because they want interesting stories. They weren't just trying to 'pick on' you - your actions, and the actions of the White House you took flak for, were actually that bad. It wasn't unfair bullying. There was just so much the WH had to answer for, and the press was treated with such disdain, that I'm sure it started to feel one sided. Most of the time I would wonder why they weren't hitting you more often.
But you get three stars because it was an interesting peek partially behind the curtain of the west wing and because it was novel to get your perspectives on White House machinations in a somewhat honest fashion. Most Bush aides never seem to tire of repeating their same old talking points, and while you were guilty of this as press secretary, you at least seem to try to come to terms with the Bush years with something approaching honestly and self-reflection.
The book he wrote was ABOUT interesting things, and that's why it's got three stars. I also appreciated his general handling of Iraq - it made me think about the whole long-term implications of the region slightly differently. The writing style was mediocre. He tries to be a somewhat dispassionate narrator, but ends up just being mostly boring. I listened to it on audiobook, and Scott himself narrated it. His vocal style is very George W. Bush-esque, and that got a little grating.
But I think the main issue I had was the content. Scott tries to paint Bush as this bipartisan, honest Texas governor who got to the White House pledging to root out the political way DC runs, and was taken down by his advisers, some personality quirks, and the 'permanent campaign' of the Bush White House, Congress, and the press, who likes to 'pick on people.'
First - I'll trust Molly Ivans' interpretation of Governor Dubya over your wool-covered eyes, Scott. Bush was a horrible governor, who didn't have to do much, and what he did do, he made worse. Trying to whitewash him as this great leader is a convenient trope that allows you to set yourself up as a betrayed non-prodigal son later in the book. There's a reason more people voted for (then) boring old Al Gore than your amazing boss - he was awful then, and he was awful as President.
Second - DC takes many queues from how the White House is run. And how the people who work there interact with the press and the national constituency. You were part of that, and while you take some responsibility, there was nothing keeping you from speaking up at the meetings you say you felt you had to remain silent at, or going to the press back then.
Also - the national press's major fault is trying to find conflict in issues where there might not actually be conflict, because they want interesting stories. They weren't just trying to 'pick on' you - your actions, and the actions of the White House you took flak for, were actually that bad. It wasn't unfair bullying. There was just so much the WH had to answer for, and the press was treated with such disdain, that I'm sure it started to feel one sided. Most of the time I would wonder why they weren't hitting you more often.
But you get three stars because it was an interesting peek partially behind the curtain of the west wing and because it was novel to get your perspectives on White House machinations in a somewhat honest fashion. Most Bush aides never seem to tire of repeating their same old talking points, and while you were guilty of this as press secretary, you at least seem to try to come to terms with the Bush years with something approaching honestly and self-reflection.
June 14, 2009
I was surprised by how much I liked this book. I heard about it on the Diane Rehm show, then found it on the "new" shelf in the library. I expected just a "here's what happened around me" kind of book, but it was much more than that.
Mostly I was surprised that McClellan really had a point; namely, that what's wrong in Washington is the culture of permanent campaigning. He argues that elected officials used to use campaign tactics to get elected, then got on with the business of actually making decisions in service of what was best for their constituents and the country. Words like 'compromise' were part of the working vocabulary. But now everything post-election continues to be a campaign, as it was pre-election.
McClellan frames all of his experience in the Bush White House from this perspective. Yes, he's telling the story of his time there, but always casting light on how the permanent campaign was playing out, and who and what that served.
While he's strongly Republican and a huge Bush supporter, he's also quite even-handed in his critiques about both political parties and what Bush did well and did wrong. And actually, as a non-Bush supporter (to put it mildly), I was fascinated to read about someone's reasonable admiration of the man. It actually raised my estimation of Bush, which I certainly wasn't expecting!
Mostly I was surprised that McClellan really had a point; namely, that what's wrong in Washington is the culture of permanent campaigning. He argues that elected officials used to use campaign tactics to get elected, then got on with the business of actually making decisions in service of what was best for their constituents and the country. Words like 'compromise' were part of the working vocabulary. But now everything post-election continues to be a campaign, as it was pre-election.
McClellan frames all of his experience in the Bush White House from this perspective. Yes, he's telling the story of his time there, but always casting light on how the permanent campaign was playing out, and who and what that served.
While he's strongly Republican and a huge Bush supporter, he's also quite even-handed in his critiques about both political parties and what Bush did well and did wrong. And actually, as a non-Bush supporter (to put it mildly), I was fascinated to read about someone's reasonable admiration of the man. It actually raised my estimation of Bush, which I certainly wasn't expecting!
September 4, 2024
I am NO fan of Bush, and was mildly interested to see what McClellan has to say (even though I distrust presidential turncoats) about possibly the worst president in history.
This is a terribly written book with disjointed rhythm. I've read better written stuff on bathroom walls. Considering that McClellan was not thought of well by the press corps or the public like Ari Fleischer was, he seems to think he did a wonderful job. Plus, for a book that is supposed to be an insider's view of the Bush White House, he mentioned the Clinton White House at least 10-15 times in the first 105 pages (that's as far as I made it. I felt I would lose brain matter by reading more) and how God-awful horrible and unethical it was. PLEASE.
In my opinion, McClellan didn't suddenly get a heart like the Tin Man in the Wizard of Oz, and I think he bears some blame for Plame-gate. This is just an attempt at CYA and he, like John Dean, comes off like a weasel. I don't like Bush or Nixon in the least, but I have trouble sympathizing with someone who turns their back on their former employer while he's still in office- even if his employer could easily be the worst president in American history.
This is a terribly written book with disjointed rhythm. I've read better written stuff on bathroom walls. Considering that McClellan was not thought of well by the press corps or the public like Ari Fleischer was, he seems to think he did a wonderful job. Plus, for a book that is supposed to be an insider's view of the Bush White House, he mentioned the Clinton White House at least 10-15 times in the first 105 pages (that's as far as I made it. I felt I would lose brain matter by reading more) and how God-awful horrible and unethical it was. PLEASE.
In my opinion, McClellan didn't suddenly get a heart like the Tin Man in the Wizard of Oz, and I think he bears some blame for Plame-gate. This is just an attempt at CYA and he, like John Dean, comes off like a weasel. I don't like Bush or Nixon in the least, but I have trouble sympathizing with someone who turns their back on their former employer while he's still in office- even if his employer could easily be the worst president in American history.
August 22, 2008
For some reason I am fascinated by reading first-hand accounts of what happened behind the scenes in recent U.S. Presidential administrations. I am particularly fascinated with reading about the George W. Bush administration and how they have become so out of touch with reality. McClellan's account was fascinating to me. As someone who thinks George W. Bush beats out only Andrew Johnson in a contest to be a good president, it was interesting to learn from a true insider how decisions were made and what was on the mind of the president.
For example, he claims that the presidents real reason for invading Iraq was to establish a beachhead of democracy in the middle east but they decided to sell the war to the world and the public as being done in response to weapons of mass destruction. This actually made me much happier about the decision and that at least some real thought had been given to it.
In fact, my opinion of President Bush improved with the reading of this book. I feel like I understand him a little better and that his heart was at least somewhat in the right place on some of the decisions that he has made even though his foresight and understanding were poor.
For example, he claims that the presidents real reason for invading Iraq was to establish a beachhead of democracy in the middle east but they decided to sell the war to the world and the public as being done in response to weapons of mass destruction. This actually made me much happier about the decision and that at least some real thought had been given to it.
In fact, my opinion of President Bush improved with the reading of this book. I feel like I understand him a little better and that his heart was at least somewhat in the right place on some of the decisions that he has made even though his foresight and understanding were poor.
August 18, 2008
This was a hard one to put into the non-fiction category.
To summarize:
Pure drivel or more accurately pure partisan drivel that lays the responsibility of the Bush administration's lies and deceptions at the feet of the press.
The most honest paragraph in the entire book, “President Bush has always been an instinctive leader more than an intellectual leader. He is not one to delve deeply into all the possible policy options-including sitting around engaging in extended debate about them-before making a choice. Rather, he chooses based on his gut and his most deeply held convictions. Such was the case with Iraq.”
To summarize:
Pure drivel or more accurately pure partisan drivel that lays the responsibility of the Bush administration's lies and deceptions at the feet of the press.
The most honest paragraph in the entire book, “President Bush has always been an instinctive leader more than an intellectual leader. He is not one to delve deeply into all the possible policy options-including sitting around engaging in extended debate about them-before making a choice. Rather, he chooses based on his gut and his most deeply held convictions. Such was the case with Iraq.”
July 24, 2009
A simple education on the day-to-day of the White House Administration. And a first-hand account of the deception and politicking of the Bush team. The writing follows McClellan's jumpy thought patterns, but he gets his message across nonetheless. (Although at times it's by pure use of redundancy.) I couldn't shake thinking how the staff in the White House "bubble" could continue to be so clueless for so many years. Not a stellar piece of work, but I found it interesting to be privvy to McClellan's perspective.
June 9, 2008
Did I like it because it completely vindicated all that we thought we knew already about Bush and Co., with the added deliciousness of having been written by a Bush insider? Yes, to a large extent. Nothing like seeing the bad guys getting called out by one of their own. In the end, I found McClellan to be a pretty sympathetic character, and his explanation of how he went from devout apologist to reluctant Cassandra, believable. Better late than not at all.
Read
July 3, 2008This is a very important book to read in our current cultural meltdown. We have lived in a political climate of lies--crimes--and cutural/political deception the likes of which are rarely seen except in volitle third-world countries.
October 6, 2008
This book takes a good hard look at what is termed the "permanent campaign" and the impact such politicalization of decision-making has had on important issues. Scott is frank about the difficult position of promoting the viewpoint of an administration that is less than open to new ideas.
June 14, 2020
Buku ini menceritakan biografi author dan interaksinya dgn mantan Presiden AS ke 43, George W Bush. Author bekerjasama sejak Bush masih jadi Gubernur Texas, dan setelah Bush terpilih sbg presiden, jabatan author naik hingga menjadi jubir.
Walaupun judul bukunya bombastis, tapi isinya ternyata gak semenghebohkan itu (pembaca kecewa). Semua orang juga tahu politikus pastilah jawara berbohong. Bush tidak terkecuali. Keinginan dan ambisi Bush utk menyerang Irak semasa Presiden Saddam sudah mendidih, terlebih lagi sejak WTC diluluhlantakkan oleh teroris. Sudah jadi rahasia umum juga Saddam gemar menjatuhkan Bush senior (ayah Bush muda ini yg juga mantan presiden AS dan memicu perang Irak tahun 1990an). Jadi saat dikatakan Irak menyimpan uranium sbg senjata rahasia di bunker-bunker, padahal setelah penyerangan terbukti gak ada, sudah jelas siapa yg mengada-ada.
Author tanggung dan kurang berani membeberkan kesalahan Bush, paling kalimat-kalimat nyaris sama yg diulang-ulang, ketidakmampuan Bush menanggulangi ekonomi, Badai Katrina dll, puncaknya author mengundurkan diri setelah ada kasus skandal Valerie Plame.
Ada kesan author ini naif atau pura-pura gak bersalah. Yah, dlm politik dan perang pastilah ada yg hrs jadi kambing hitam, gak usah baperan dan sakit hati. Tugas jubir White House memang merekayasa pencitraan Presiden, tapi kalau pekerjaanmu gak mumpuni/gak becus, bersiap aja utk "dikorbankan".
Seandainya isinya lebih fokus dan gak bertele-tele, gak muter-muter kesana kemari ky bahasa politikus, mungkin bisa lebih menarik. Kalau gak berani transparan ya gak usah bikin bukunya sih. Entahlah si author kekurangan duit atau cari sensasi, cuma dia yg tahu.
Walaupun judul bukunya bombastis, tapi isinya ternyata gak semenghebohkan itu (pembaca kecewa). Semua orang juga tahu politikus pastilah jawara berbohong. Bush tidak terkecuali. Keinginan dan ambisi Bush utk menyerang Irak semasa Presiden Saddam sudah mendidih, terlebih lagi sejak WTC diluluhlantakkan oleh teroris. Sudah jadi rahasia umum juga Saddam gemar menjatuhkan Bush senior (ayah Bush muda ini yg juga mantan presiden AS dan memicu perang Irak tahun 1990an). Jadi saat dikatakan Irak menyimpan uranium sbg senjata rahasia di bunker-bunker, padahal setelah penyerangan terbukti gak ada, sudah jelas siapa yg mengada-ada.
Author tanggung dan kurang berani membeberkan kesalahan Bush, paling kalimat-kalimat nyaris sama yg diulang-ulang, ketidakmampuan Bush menanggulangi ekonomi, Badai Katrina dll, puncaknya author mengundurkan diri setelah ada kasus skandal Valerie Plame.
Ada kesan author ini naif atau pura-pura gak bersalah. Yah, dlm politik dan perang pastilah ada yg hrs jadi kambing hitam, gak usah baperan dan sakit hati. Tugas jubir White House memang merekayasa pencitraan Presiden, tapi kalau pekerjaanmu gak mumpuni/gak becus, bersiap aja utk "dikorbankan".
Seandainya isinya lebih fokus dan gak bertele-tele, gak muter-muter kesana kemari ky bahasa politikus, mungkin bisa lebih menarik. Kalau gak berani transparan ya gak usah bikin bukunya sih. Entahlah si author kekurangan duit atau cari sensasi, cuma dia yg tahu.
August 9, 2008
This is the book any ex-employee would love to write to exonerate himself from the sins of the organization. When that person's job is to explain and cover the mistakes of one of the nation's worst presidencies, the book gets everyone's attention.
McClellan explains his own background and what led him to work for the president. It's good to get perspective, but the explanation of the 2000 election until he became press secretary could have been shortened as it isn't revealing and that ground was well-covered by other books. What makes the book compelling was that he would be the press secretary that would have to explain the deceptions that led to the Iraq war(this deeply bothered him as he states, "you only go to war unless you have to and we didn't have to") , Hurricane Katrina, and the disclosure of CIA operative to the American public(in which the people involved lied about their involvement to Scott, but made Scott out as the liar to the American public).
To get the inside scoop of what happened behind closed doors is appealing to anyone who is into politics. There is really nothing new here. Everyone knows about the deceit leading up to the Iraq War, the outing of a CIA agent in an attempt to discredit the person who is trying to discredit the war. He theorizes all this happened because of the concept of the perpetual campaign. Instead of getting cooperation, initiatives are simply marketed to trick the American public into a sense of urgency.
Some things I didn't know was that the president leaked Valerie Plame's name to discredit joe wilson. The fact that the social security reform (stating the system was broken) was a hoax.
I remember being frustrated when all these disasters were going on and watching Scott McClellan skirting the issues. It was hard to read this book because of it. However, the true value in this book is that it is a precursor of an analysis on this presidency. It will provide great fodder for presidential historians and leadership gurus.
Some quotes:
On whether bush took cocaine when he was younger :
"'The media won't let go of these ridiculous cocaine rumors,' I heard Bush say, 'You know the truth is I honestly don't remember whether I tried it or not. We had some pretty wild parties back in the day, and I just don't remember." The overheard comment struck me and has stayed with me to this day not for what it revealed or concealed about the young George W. Bush, but for what it said about Bush as an older man and political leader, especially as revealed through my later experiences working for him. I remember thinking to myself, How can that be? How can someone simply not remember whether or not they used an illegal substance like cocaine? It didn't make a lot of sense. P.49
Rove instituted regular strategery meetings using a term derived not, as some might have believed from a real Bush remark but from a Saturday Night Live Skit..."
So, generally speaking, I not only understood and respected the Bush administration's emphasis of staying on message, but supported it and worked to help shape it and spread it as part of my job. p124 (explains perceptions of Scott as a robot. From reading the book he had more to do with this technique than the president.)
The president's dream of a democratic Middle East was shared by several key administration officials...Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfield...were mainly interested in eliminating a global threat to regional and global peace...and a little less enthralled by Bush's vision of a world transformed by freedom...Bush saw his opportunity to create a legacy of greatness...But there was a problem here...a disconnect between the president's most heartfelt objective in going to war and the publicly stated rationale for that war 130-131
But his advisers needed to recognize how potentially harmful his instinctual leadership and limited intellectual curiosity can be when it comes to crucial decisions, and in light of today's situation, it has become reasonable to question his judgement.p146
A war of choice or a war of necessity...
Surely the distinction between a necessary, unavoidable war and a war that the United States could have avoided but chose to wage an obvious one that Bush must have thought about in the months before the invasion...It strikes me today as an indication of his lack of inquisitiveness and his detrimental resistance to reflection something his advisers needed to compensate Better than they did. p203
The Dickerson question...
"After 9/11, what would your biggest mistake be, would you say, and what lessons have you learned from it?
His response was followed by an agonizing long pause.
Have you ever experienced seconds that felt like minutes? A hundred thoughts flowed through my brain while that terrible silence hung embarrassingly in the air...
The assembled reporters stirred uneasily in their seats as the silence continued. When someone is struggling in public, everyone around feels uncomfortable. No American wants to see our president look awkward or embarrassed on a national platform. Yet that is what we were witnessing now. As President Bush continued to agonize over a response, I blamed myself...
Watching Bush struggle with a simple question, I sensed, as many others in the room did, that he was hung up on what he thought to extract from him, an acknowledgment, one year after the fact, that his decision to go into Iraq was a mistake. That's why, unwilling to make any such admission, his response had morphed into yet another justification of the invasion, even though this was exactly the opposite of what Dickerson had asked. p206
The president had promised himself that he would accomplish what his father had failed to do by winning a second term in office. And that meant operating continually in campaign mode: never explaining, never apologizing, never retreating. Unfortunately, that strategy also had less justifiable repercussions: never reflecting, never reconsidering, never comprising. Especially not where Iraq was concerned. p210
McClellan explains his own background and what led him to work for the president. It's good to get perspective, but the explanation of the 2000 election until he became press secretary could have been shortened as it isn't revealing and that ground was well-covered by other books. What makes the book compelling was that he would be the press secretary that would have to explain the deceptions that led to the Iraq war(this deeply bothered him as he states, "you only go to war unless you have to and we didn't have to") , Hurricane Katrina, and the disclosure of CIA operative to the American public(in which the people involved lied about their involvement to Scott, but made Scott out as the liar to the American public).
To get the inside scoop of what happened behind closed doors is appealing to anyone who is into politics. There is really nothing new here. Everyone knows about the deceit leading up to the Iraq War, the outing of a CIA agent in an attempt to discredit the person who is trying to discredit the war. He theorizes all this happened because of the concept of the perpetual campaign. Instead of getting cooperation, initiatives are simply marketed to trick the American public into a sense of urgency.
Some things I didn't know was that the president leaked Valerie Plame's name to discredit joe wilson. The fact that the social security reform (stating the system was broken) was a hoax.
I remember being frustrated when all these disasters were going on and watching Scott McClellan skirting the issues. It was hard to read this book because of it. However, the true value in this book is that it is a precursor of an analysis on this presidency. It will provide great fodder for presidential historians and leadership gurus.
Some quotes:
On whether bush took cocaine when he was younger :
"'The media won't let go of these ridiculous cocaine rumors,' I heard Bush say, 'You know the truth is I honestly don't remember whether I tried it or not. We had some pretty wild parties back in the day, and I just don't remember." The overheard comment struck me and has stayed with me to this day not for what it revealed or concealed about the young George W. Bush, but for what it said about Bush as an older man and political leader, especially as revealed through my later experiences working for him. I remember thinking to myself, How can that be? How can someone simply not remember whether or not they used an illegal substance like cocaine? It didn't make a lot of sense. P.49
Rove instituted regular strategery meetings using a term derived not, as some might have believed from a real Bush remark but from a Saturday Night Live Skit..."
So, generally speaking, I not only understood and respected the Bush administration's emphasis of staying on message, but supported it and worked to help shape it and spread it as part of my job. p124 (explains perceptions of Scott as a robot. From reading the book he had more to do with this technique than the president.)
The president's dream of a democratic Middle East was shared by several key administration officials...Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfield...were mainly interested in eliminating a global threat to regional and global peace...and a little less enthralled by Bush's vision of a world transformed by freedom...Bush saw his opportunity to create a legacy of greatness...But there was a problem here...a disconnect between the president's most heartfelt objective in going to war and the publicly stated rationale for that war 130-131
But his advisers needed to recognize how potentially harmful his instinctual leadership and limited intellectual curiosity can be when it comes to crucial decisions, and in light of today's situation, it has become reasonable to question his judgement.p146
A war of choice or a war of necessity...
Surely the distinction between a necessary, unavoidable war and a war that the United States could have avoided but chose to wage an obvious one that Bush must have thought about in the months before the invasion...It strikes me today as an indication of his lack of inquisitiveness and his detrimental resistance to reflection something his advisers needed to compensate Better than they did. p203
The Dickerson question...
"After 9/11, what would your biggest mistake be, would you say, and what lessons have you learned from it?
His response was followed by an agonizing long pause.
Have you ever experienced seconds that felt like minutes? A hundred thoughts flowed through my brain while that terrible silence hung embarrassingly in the air...
The assembled reporters stirred uneasily in their seats as the silence continued. When someone is struggling in public, everyone around feels uncomfortable. No American wants to see our president look awkward or embarrassed on a national platform. Yet that is what we were witnessing now. As President Bush continued to agonize over a response, I blamed myself...
Watching Bush struggle with a simple question, I sensed, as many others in the room did, that he was hung up on what he thought to extract from him, an acknowledgment, one year after the fact, that his decision to go into Iraq was a mistake. That's why, unwilling to make any such admission, his response had morphed into yet another justification of the invasion, even though this was exactly the opposite of what Dickerson had asked. p206
The president had promised himself that he would accomplish what his father had failed to do by winning a second term in office. And that meant operating continually in campaign mode: never explaining, never apologizing, never retreating. Unfortunately, that strategy also had less justifiable repercussions: never reflecting, never reconsidering, never comprising. Especially not where Iraq was concerned. p210
October 24, 2008
Scott McClellan's book "What Happened" is an insider's attempt to explain just how the Bush Administration got so badly off track after a promising start. "What happened?" is, of course, the classic question a person asks after having been blindsided. In large part, it is obvious that this is exactly how McClellan felt after his term of service in the Bush White House was over -- abused and disheartened, puzzled and angry at how things could have gone so wrong, for both himself and the Administration he believed in.
McClellan started working for Bush when he was the Governor of Texas, and followed him to Washington when Bush was elected President in 2000. He severed nearly three years as President Bush's press secretary, an oftentimes thankless task. His tenure as press secretary covered contentious times, including the controversies over the flawed intelligence leading up to the Iraq war and the outing of covert CIA operative Valerie Plame.
McClellan is certainly a disaffected former Bush loyalist, and is obviously still bitter that Karl Rove, Bush's celebrated "brain," and Scooter Libby, Cheney's chief of staff, lied to him about their roles in the Plame scandal, and basically hung him out to dry. McClellan writes that when it became known that he had falsely told the press that Rove and Libby were not involved in leaking Plame's identity, the press reaction was "about as negative and biting" as could be. He felt his reputation "crumbling away, bit by bit." McClellan's pain at his damaged credibility, as well as at Bush's squandered promise, infuse the entire book. However, his book is still thoughtful and well reasoned, and seems to have been written more in sorrow than in anger.
That having been said, the concept of the book is better than its execution. The writing is mundane, boring at times, and frequently choppy. As political memoirs go, this one is relatively low key and even dry, the intense press reaction to it notwithstanding. It contains no startling revelations, unless the story of how a life-long Bush loyalist became a very public critic of Bush counts as one.
McClellan left the White House with his credibility in tatters due to the lies of others, having basically been fired after more than two years of loyal and difficult service as press secretary. Upon leaving the White House for the last time, his reaction was that "after more than five years of living inside the bubble of a presidency once filled with so much promise and now woefully off course, little seemed completely clear to me. I was still wondering what happened."
Although it isn't entirely clear, it seems that what McClellan believes happened is that Bush was undone by his own "unconscious acquiescence and, at times, enabling of deception." McClellan does have some interesting insights into the Washington scene and Bush and his administration. These center around what he calls the permanent campaign, and the "bubble of the White House." These factors led to the inability, or unwillingness, of the Bush Administration to be entirely candid with the American people, in particular about the Iraq war.
McClellan says that although he doesn't believe the Bush Administration consciously lied about the reasons for going to war in Iraq, it was not blameless in the way it handled intelligence in the pre-war period. According to him, "the campaign mentality at times led the president and his chief advisors to spin, hide, shade, and exaggerate the truth, obscuring nuances and ignoring the caveats that should have accompanied their arguments. Rather than choosing to be forthright and candid, they chose to sell the war, and in so doing they did a disservice to the American people and to our democracy."
He concludes that "the decision to invade Iraq, more than anything else, took the Bush presidency off course, and our excessive embrace of the political tactics at the heart of Washingon's culture of deception kept it there. When candor could have helped to minimze the political fallout from the unraveling of the chief rationale for war, spin and evasion were instead what we employed."
Some of McClellan's harshest criticism concerns Bush's commutation of Scooter Libby's prison sentence for perjury and obstruction of justice: "This kind of special treatment undermines our system of justice....I believe in the rule of law, and I think a president and those who serve a president have a special obligation to live up to both the letter and the spirit of the law. President Bush certainly has the right and the power to commute Libby's entence. But in choosing to do so, he sent an unfortunate message to America and to the world -- that in the United States criminal behavior on behalf of a political cause may go unpunished if those who support that cause have the power to make it happen. Those in power have access to a different system of justice....I think it's unfortunate that the partisan, winner-take-all mentality of the permanent campaign has come to exert so much influence over the way our nation is governed. Intervening to circumvent a legally sound and morally just verdict because the defendant happens to be politally connected may be asympton of just such a deplorable trend."
If it is true that criticisms written by one's friends are more stinging and more accurate than those penned by one's enemies, then What Happened contains many stinging and accurate criticisms of George Bush's flawed presidency.
McClellan started working for Bush when he was the Governor of Texas, and followed him to Washington when Bush was elected President in 2000. He severed nearly three years as President Bush's press secretary, an oftentimes thankless task. His tenure as press secretary covered contentious times, including the controversies over the flawed intelligence leading up to the Iraq war and the outing of covert CIA operative Valerie Plame.
McClellan is certainly a disaffected former Bush loyalist, and is obviously still bitter that Karl Rove, Bush's celebrated "brain," and Scooter Libby, Cheney's chief of staff, lied to him about their roles in the Plame scandal, and basically hung him out to dry. McClellan writes that when it became known that he had falsely told the press that Rove and Libby were not involved in leaking Plame's identity, the press reaction was "about as negative and biting" as could be. He felt his reputation "crumbling away, bit by bit." McClellan's pain at his damaged credibility, as well as at Bush's squandered promise, infuse the entire book. However, his book is still thoughtful and well reasoned, and seems to have been written more in sorrow than in anger.
That having been said, the concept of the book is better than its execution. The writing is mundane, boring at times, and frequently choppy. As political memoirs go, this one is relatively low key and even dry, the intense press reaction to it notwithstanding. It contains no startling revelations, unless the story of how a life-long Bush loyalist became a very public critic of Bush counts as one.
McClellan left the White House with his credibility in tatters due to the lies of others, having basically been fired after more than two years of loyal and difficult service as press secretary. Upon leaving the White House for the last time, his reaction was that "after more than five years of living inside the bubble of a presidency once filled with so much promise and now woefully off course, little seemed completely clear to me. I was still wondering what happened."
Although it isn't entirely clear, it seems that what McClellan believes happened is that Bush was undone by his own "unconscious acquiescence and, at times, enabling of deception." McClellan does have some interesting insights into the Washington scene and Bush and his administration. These center around what he calls the permanent campaign, and the "bubble of the White House." These factors led to the inability, or unwillingness, of the Bush Administration to be entirely candid with the American people, in particular about the Iraq war.
McClellan says that although he doesn't believe the Bush Administration consciously lied about the reasons for going to war in Iraq, it was not blameless in the way it handled intelligence in the pre-war period. According to him, "the campaign mentality at times led the president and his chief advisors to spin, hide, shade, and exaggerate the truth, obscuring nuances and ignoring the caveats that should have accompanied their arguments. Rather than choosing to be forthright and candid, they chose to sell the war, and in so doing they did a disservice to the American people and to our democracy."
He concludes that "the decision to invade Iraq, more than anything else, took the Bush presidency off course, and our excessive embrace of the political tactics at the heart of Washingon's culture of deception kept it there. When candor could have helped to minimze the political fallout from the unraveling of the chief rationale for war, spin and evasion were instead what we employed."
Some of McClellan's harshest criticism concerns Bush's commutation of Scooter Libby's prison sentence for perjury and obstruction of justice: "This kind of special treatment undermines our system of justice....I believe in the rule of law, and I think a president and those who serve a president have a special obligation to live up to both the letter and the spirit of the law. President Bush certainly has the right and the power to commute Libby's entence. But in choosing to do so, he sent an unfortunate message to America and to the world -- that in the United States criminal behavior on behalf of a political cause may go unpunished if those who support that cause have the power to make it happen. Those in power have access to a different system of justice....I think it's unfortunate that the partisan, winner-take-all mentality of the permanent campaign has come to exert so much influence over the way our nation is governed. Intervening to circumvent a legally sound and morally just verdict because the defendant happens to be politally connected may be asympton of just such a deplorable trend."
If it is true that criticisms written by one's friends are more stinging and more accurate than those penned by one's enemies, then What Happened contains many stinging and accurate criticisms of George Bush's flawed presidency.
March 12, 2017
If I'd read this THEN, I'd have rated it lower, but actually, it ages well, and seems much more relevant now. I had to listen through the boring stuff about McClellan's background and good-faith belief in Bush and "the agenda," but if you get the book in print or e-, you can skim all that. Drawing on his time as a senior communications officer in the Bush White House, wherein he shaped messaging and communications strategy, in retrospect McClellan is able to offer insight into how the Bush team changed the way the White House has related to the press and the public ever since. Main takeaways:
*The culture of permanent campaign--started who knows when, but according to SM coming fully into play during the Clinton Administration changed how the White House operated once Bush came to power. So that although Bush had been a moderate Republican in Texas and had governed to the center (which SM acknowledges Clinton had also done, a strategy that had saved his presidency post-impeachment--thus weakening his argument that it was the Clinton admin that had brought the permanent campaign full-force into DC), the Bush/Rove constant eye on how everything was playing with the public changed how Bush governed in Washington. From day one, everything was about re-election. This meant Bush was more concerned with social policy, like abortion, than he'd been as a governor.
*It also meant that transparency was a thing of the past. Message discipline, positioning, and outright deception became core strategies when thinking about how to "sell" policies to the public.
*The media tended to play into all this by covering controversy rather than policy and substance. For example, on the Iraq war, the media played right into the Bush team's hands. The idea was to sell the war to the public. Instead of digging into *the assertions* Bush & Co made about *the necessity* of the war, the media, with rare exceptions, mostly covered the controversy over going to war... that is, they covered how well the Bush agenda was playing with the public. Was the war idea up or down in the polls? Sound familiar today?
*The Valerie Plame story is at the heart of the book. Reminder to those who forgot, or to those too young to even know: Valerie Plame was a CIA operative married to a State Dept employee sent to Niger to verify whether radioactive materials were in fact linked to Iraq--ie, whether Iraq might indeed be developing the capacity for "weapons of mass destruction," the pretext for invading Iraq. Wilson, Plame's husband, wrote that he had found nothing. In retaliation for making his findings public, Karl Rove exposed Plame's cover as a spy to a couple of journalists, who published this information. Revealing the identity of an undercover operative is a felony, not to mention just evil, and certainly the kind of thing you'd get mad about if you were mad about things like Benghazi. McClellan then publicly denied that Rove had done this, after Rove swore it wasn't him, embarrassing McClellan for all time. So this business of lying really bothered McClellan. He saw it as part of the legacy of Watergate, and also saw it as a failure of the Bush Administration to learn from that legacy--that you need to get things out in the open as soon as possible, or else they snowball and you get in worse trouble, which is What Happened.
There's more in the book, including the fuck ups around Katrina, but the things to think about for where we are now have to do with the permanent campaign. Obama was less truculent with the press than Bush was (remember how the Bush Admin wanted it to be treasonous to criticize the President during wartime?). But he was also very secretive. Not deceptive, just not forthcoming at all. He was hard to get hold of. He didn't have press conferences. There was the Underwear Bomber, and Obama didn't even have a press conference. He didn't talk about the drone strikes even when they took out major terrorists. He just didn't say much at all.
Trump registered as running for re-election pretty much as soon as he took office. He's campaigning already. That's what all those tweets are about. That's what the wall and the EOs are all about. The Muslim Ban. He doesn't care if it makes any sense. He's just shooting off his mouth the same old way because it plays well with the people who vote for him. He won't stop, I promise you. It's all campaign. It's totally working.
And the media cover every little bit of what he says, at the expense of covering what Congress is up to, at the expense of digging into the details and getting into the merits of things. They look at how things are playing. They cover the show, not the substance.
If you're interested in patterns, you might be interested in this book. What we're seeing is bigger and messier, but it's not new.
*The culture of permanent campaign--started who knows when, but according to SM coming fully into play during the Clinton Administration changed how the White House operated once Bush came to power. So that although Bush had been a moderate Republican in Texas and had governed to the center (which SM acknowledges Clinton had also done, a strategy that had saved his presidency post-impeachment--thus weakening his argument that it was the Clinton admin that had brought the permanent campaign full-force into DC), the Bush/Rove constant eye on how everything was playing with the public changed how Bush governed in Washington. From day one, everything was about re-election. This meant Bush was more concerned with social policy, like abortion, than he'd been as a governor.
*It also meant that transparency was a thing of the past. Message discipline, positioning, and outright deception became core strategies when thinking about how to "sell" policies to the public.
*The media tended to play into all this by covering controversy rather than policy and substance. For example, on the Iraq war, the media played right into the Bush team's hands. The idea was to sell the war to the public. Instead of digging into *the assertions* Bush & Co made about *the necessity* of the war, the media, with rare exceptions, mostly covered the controversy over going to war... that is, they covered how well the Bush agenda was playing with the public. Was the war idea up or down in the polls? Sound familiar today?
*The Valerie Plame story is at the heart of the book. Reminder to those who forgot, or to those too young to even know: Valerie Plame was a CIA operative married to a State Dept employee sent to Niger to verify whether radioactive materials were in fact linked to Iraq--ie, whether Iraq might indeed be developing the capacity for "weapons of mass destruction," the pretext for invading Iraq. Wilson, Plame's husband, wrote that he had found nothing. In retaliation for making his findings public, Karl Rove exposed Plame's cover as a spy to a couple of journalists, who published this information. Revealing the identity of an undercover operative is a felony, not to mention just evil, and certainly the kind of thing you'd get mad about if you were mad about things like Benghazi. McClellan then publicly denied that Rove had done this, after Rove swore it wasn't him, embarrassing McClellan for all time. So this business of lying really bothered McClellan. He saw it as part of the legacy of Watergate, and also saw it as a failure of the Bush Administration to learn from that legacy--that you need to get things out in the open as soon as possible, or else they snowball and you get in worse trouble, which is What Happened.
There's more in the book, including the fuck ups around Katrina, but the things to think about for where we are now have to do with the permanent campaign. Obama was less truculent with the press than Bush was (remember how the Bush Admin wanted it to be treasonous to criticize the President during wartime?). But he was also very secretive. Not deceptive, just not forthcoming at all. He was hard to get hold of. He didn't have press conferences. There was the Underwear Bomber, and Obama didn't even have a press conference. He didn't talk about the drone strikes even when they took out major terrorists. He just didn't say much at all.
Trump registered as running for re-election pretty much as soon as he took office. He's campaigning already. That's what all those tweets are about. That's what the wall and the EOs are all about. The Muslim Ban. He doesn't care if it makes any sense. He's just shooting off his mouth the same old way because it plays well with the people who vote for him. He won't stop, I promise you. It's all campaign. It's totally working.
And the media cover every little bit of what he says, at the expense of covering what Congress is up to, at the expense of digging into the details and getting into the merits of things. They look at how things are playing. They cover the show, not the substance.
If you're interested in patterns, you might be interested in this book. What we're seeing is bigger and messier, but it's not new.
November 26, 2008
I finished reading Scott McClellan’s memoir: What Happened: Inside the Bush White and Washington’s Culture of Deception. This is my first political memoir of a recent event. Normally, I’d pick up a book written many years after the fact, letting distance provide some context. But, I just had to have this book as McClellan worked the media and blog circuit. As you may know, he was a loyal Bush supporter and fellow Texan who served as White House Press Secretary from July 2003 until April 2006.
The memoir focuses primarily on the selling and secrecy around the Iraq War and the outing of a CIA agent as payback for challenging the weapons of mass destruction (WMD) claim for the war. It touches ever so briefly on the political effects of Hurricane Katrina on the Bush presidency.
There are a few tidbits that McClellan confirms. Bush decided to go to war with Iraq by November 2001 (p. 127). However, McClellan says that the war was right, but that it was marketed wrong, emphasizing WMD instead of spreading freedom. This revisionism is expected from loyal Bush folks, but it seems weird coming from a person who is persona non grata these days in Republican circles. He said Bush’s primary failing was not admitting that WMD’s weren’t the real reason for Iraq War. With respect to Katrina, he blames state and local officials, and Karl Rove, for any failings in the government’s reaction to one of its worst natural disasters. Also, Karl Rove is definitely fingered as someone who exposed Valerie Plame’s CIA cover, in an attempt to discredit her husband, Ambassador Joe Wilson.
The main points I took away from this book are:
* McClellan portrays himself as a do-gooder who can do no wrong. He’s smitten with the President and never stabs him in the back, or front, during his tenure or in this book.
* It’s never McClellan’s fault. It’s always someone else’s fault. He is always doing the best he can. For anything bad that happened, he says that he was deceived, lied to, kept in the dark, or manipulated by dark foes (pp. 124, 138, 146, 153, 155, 163, 259, 297).
* Republicans are portrayed as being misunderstood, while Democrats are often wrong from the get-go. He blames the “system” constantly, but never blames individuals for making the system into what it is today. My personal thoughts are that the partisanship of the Republican leaders of the House during the 1990s led to the extreme partisanship we see in the White House today.
* McClellan says that while Bush won in 2004, the narrowness of the win “supplied no real mandate” (p. 252). Bush and Cheney would never say this, claiming they had a mandate to do whatever they wanted, especially after November 2004.
* His blame summation: Rove was bad. Libby was bad. Cheney was secretive. Bush was misled. Scott McClellan was lied to (p. 306).
McClellan also appears to have some serious masculinity hang-ups. He constantly uses parenthetical asides to assert that he truly is a manly-man. Talking to his mom, discussing stuff with his wife and being beaten up by his older brothers are addressed with unnecessary machismo (pp. 103, 112, 26). Additionally, when offering up his thinly-sketched fix for partisanship, he says that “for the rest of this chapter, I’ll refer to the hypothetical leaders of tomorrow simply as ‘he,’ to avoid the awkwardness of saying ‘he or she’ repeatedly. No disrespect is intended to any current or future national leaders of the female gender” (p. 314) What the heck is that? He then spends the next 9 1/3 pages saying he over and over again. Why not alternate? Why choose he over she? I’m sorry, it’s much more awkward to erase the contributions (past, current or future) of women in the leadership ranks of our government.
Clocking in at 323 pages, this book went on way to long. It could have been cut down to 100-150 pages and still gotten across its points. Was it a good read? Not necessarily. It certainly didn’t fit the bill as something that would alienate Republicans and rally Democrats.
The memoir focuses primarily on the selling and secrecy around the Iraq War and the outing of a CIA agent as payback for challenging the weapons of mass destruction (WMD) claim for the war. It touches ever so briefly on the political effects of Hurricane Katrina on the Bush presidency.
There are a few tidbits that McClellan confirms. Bush decided to go to war with Iraq by November 2001 (p. 127). However, McClellan says that the war was right, but that it was marketed wrong, emphasizing WMD instead of spreading freedom. This revisionism is expected from loyal Bush folks, but it seems weird coming from a person who is persona non grata these days in Republican circles. He said Bush’s primary failing was not admitting that WMD’s weren’t the real reason for Iraq War. With respect to Katrina, he blames state and local officials, and Karl Rove, for any failings in the government’s reaction to one of its worst natural disasters. Also, Karl Rove is definitely fingered as someone who exposed Valerie Plame’s CIA cover, in an attempt to discredit her husband, Ambassador Joe Wilson.
The main points I took away from this book are:
* McClellan portrays himself as a do-gooder who can do no wrong. He’s smitten with the President and never stabs him in the back, or front, during his tenure or in this book.
* It’s never McClellan’s fault. It’s always someone else’s fault. He is always doing the best he can. For anything bad that happened, he says that he was deceived, lied to, kept in the dark, or manipulated by dark foes (pp. 124, 138, 146, 153, 155, 163, 259, 297).
* Republicans are portrayed as being misunderstood, while Democrats are often wrong from the get-go. He blames the “system” constantly, but never blames individuals for making the system into what it is today. My personal thoughts are that the partisanship of the Republican leaders of the House during the 1990s led to the extreme partisanship we see in the White House today.
* McClellan says that while Bush won in 2004, the narrowness of the win “supplied no real mandate” (p. 252). Bush and Cheney would never say this, claiming they had a mandate to do whatever they wanted, especially after November 2004.
* His blame summation: Rove was bad. Libby was bad. Cheney was secretive. Bush was misled. Scott McClellan was lied to (p. 306).
McClellan also appears to have some serious masculinity hang-ups. He constantly uses parenthetical asides to assert that he truly is a manly-man. Talking to his mom, discussing stuff with his wife and being beaten up by his older brothers are addressed with unnecessary machismo (pp. 103, 112, 26). Additionally, when offering up his thinly-sketched fix for partisanship, he says that “for the rest of this chapter, I’ll refer to the hypothetical leaders of tomorrow simply as ‘he,’ to avoid the awkwardness of saying ‘he or she’ repeatedly. No disrespect is intended to any current or future national leaders of the female gender” (p. 314) What the heck is that? He then spends the next 9 1/3 pages saying he over and over again. Why not alternate? Why choose he over she? I’m sorry, it’s much more awkward to erase the contributions (past, current or future) of women in the leadership ranks of our government.
Clocking in at 323 pages, this book went on way to long. It could have been cut down to 100-150 pages and still gotten across its points. Was it a good read? Not necessarily. It certainly didn’t fit the bill as something that would alienate Republicans and rally Democrats.
August 12, 2013
Having listened to this as an audio book, I will note that this is an instance where someone really should have convinced the author not to narrate his own book. For some reason, McClellan affects a stilted "reading" pronunciation. Most notably, he reads the article "a" like the letter "a" and does the same thing to every word that starts with an "a" ("about" comes out as "ay-bout," for example). This man needs an infusion of schwas! Out of curiosity, I listened to an NPR interview clip to see whether he pronounces his words that way conversationally, and he does not. It surprises me that someone who spoke publicly on a regular basis, as White House (or "why-douse" in McClellan-speak) Press Secretary, would read in such a stilted way. In any event, a professional narrator or voice actor would have been a much better choice.
As for the content, I often found myself surprised when McClellan reported the shock and dismay he felt when he realized certain prominent members of the Bush administration had lied to him. It's difficult to believe he was ever so credulous, but it seems that he was a true believer, who uttered phrases such as "compassionate conservative" and "uniter, not a divider" without a shade of irony. Much of what he reports about the inner workings of the "why-douse" are not especially surprising, but I admit I was curious. One of McClellan's central themes is that the Bush adminstration fell prey to the practice of being in "permanent campaign" mode, using those
techniques not only for campaigning but also for governing. I couldn't help rolling my eyes whenever he blamed the Clinton administration for setting the "permanent campaign" tone in the first place, though at least he does allow that Bush et. al. took it to new depths.
His final section is about how to fix the problems he outlines in the book. It strikes me as naive that he believes creating a "Deputy Chief of Staff for Governing" position would usher in a new era of openness and transparency. Also, his contention that all administrations need to enlist centrists from both parties reveals more about McClellan's own political proclivities than anything else.
If you are curious about "what happened" behind the scenes in the Bush administration during McClellan's tenure, by all means check this book out from your library. I'd recommend against the audio book, because of the distracting narration, and I'd also recommend against spending money on this narrative.
As for the content, I often found myself surprised when McClellan reported the shock and dismay he felt when he realized certain prominent members of the Bush administration had lied to him. It's difficult to believe he was ever so credulous, but it seems that he was a true believer, who uttered phrases such as "compassionate conservative" and "uniter, not a divider" without a shade of irony. Much of what he reports about the inner workings of the "why-douse" are not especially surprising, but I admit I was curious. One of McClellan's central themes is that the Bush adminstration fell prey to the practice of being in "permanent campaign" mode, using those
techniques not only for campaigning but also for governing. I couldn't help rolling my eyes whenever he blamed the Clinton administration for setting the "permanent campaign" tone in the first place, though at least he does allow that Bush et. al. took it to new depths.
His final section is about how to fix the problems he outlines in the book. It strikes me as naive that he believes creating a "Deputy Chief of Staff for Governing" position would usher in a new era of openness and transparency. Also, his contention that all administrations need to enlist centrists from both parties reveals more about McClellan's own political proclivities than anything else.
If you are curious about "what happened" behind the scenes in the Bush administration during McClellan's tenure, by all means check this book out from your library. I'd recommend against the audio book, because of the distracting narration, and I'd also recommend against spending money on this narrative.
February 19, 2009
As we all know, the author was the pompous, self-righteous press secretary for President Bush after Ari Fleischer left the post, a man always defending the indefensible. Yet, as a member of Bush's Texas inner sanctum, his endorsement of Barack Obama last year indicated he had a story to tell and left the White House with his political ideals shaken.
The book was slow going at first, while Mr. McClellan gave endless details of his youth, setting the stage for why he's a man of impeccable integrity and the poster child for the most conservative of GOP movements. The recounting of his reaction to a hazing incident at University of Texas was particularly self-serving - McClellan's "proof" that his true character stands up for truth and honor even against popular opinion.
But persevere and you will be rewarded. This book reveals very little new information about the Bush Administration - for those of us well informed on Bush's past and character, everything unfolded as expected. The value here is to have everything verified by this inner source....the dawning realization by Mr. McClellan that he was mouthpiece for a repugnant, corrupt administration (Rove, Cheney, Libby) and his shock during conversations with Bush that indicated this man, his president, truly didn't understand what he was doing.
Most telling was Bush's incomprehension as the WMD lie fell apart - he asked the author why did Americans care why we went in there when all that really mattered was that we were bringing freedom to Iraq? McClellan's observations about Condeleeza Rice are also fascinating and answered my own lingering questions about why she's seemingly so removed from the administration's wrongdoings.
I particularly appreciated his viewpoint on the perpetual campaign run by the Bush crew - where actual understanding of events didn't matter and actual steps taken were brushed under the rug, while the marketing of the philosophy to the American people got center stage. The entire eight years was smoke and mirrors and I appreciated McClellan's admission of this fact.
I'd give this one 3.5 stars if I could. As a "tell all," it's pretty good.
The book was slow going at first, while Mr. McClellan gave endless details of his youth, setting the stage for why he's a man of impeccable integrity and the poster child for the most conservative of GOP movements. The recounting of his reaction to a hazing incident at University of Texas was particularly self-serving - McClellan's "proof" that his true character stands up for truth and honor even against popular opinion.
But persevere and you will be rewarded. This book reveals very little new information about the Bush Administration - for those of us well informed on Bush's past and character, everything unfolded as expected. The value here is to have everything verified by this inner source....the dawning realization by Mr. McClellan that he was mouthpiece for a repugnant, corrupt administration (Rove, Cheney, Libby) and his shock during conversations with Bush that indicated this man, his president, truly didn't understand what he was doing.
Most telling was Bush's incomprehension as the WMD lie fell apart - he asked the author why did Americans care why we went in there when all that really mattered was that we were bringing freedom to Iraq? McClellan's observations about Condeleeza Rice are also fascinating and answered my own lingering questions about why she's seemingly so removed from the administration's wrongdoings.
I particularly appreciated his viewpoint on the perpetual campaign run by the Bush crew - where actual understanding of events didn't matter and actual steps taken were brushed under the rug, while the marketing of the philosophy to the American people got center stage. The entire eight years was smoke and mirrors and I appreciated McClellan's admission of this fact.
I'd give this one 3.5 stars if I could. As a "tell all," it's pretty good.
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