What McClellan Says

Have watched some interviews of Scott promoting the book, but haven't read it yet. He is bending over backwards to be nice to President Bush. Assuming the book is no more hard hitting than the interviews, this is not a collection of BLOCKBUSTER revelations, despite the frantic coverage over the past couple of days.

His argument boils down to this - President Bush and the staff went to Washington with a goal of changing the way business was done. Instead of succeeding, they got dragged into the permanent election cycle that was the way business was done in the Clinton White House. This Scott finds disappointing.

On Iraq, there was no lying he says, but the administration, again being swept away by the need to win the game of politics, played up the news that was good and ignored the news that was bad. President Bush was sincere in his desire to change the middle east by spreading freedom, and that was the primary goal for going in.

Over all, pretty tame stuff. The fact that he vouches for Bush's sincerity in wanting to help the middle east flies in the face of the standard democratic hate speech about the President - just there to steal oil and such - is good news for the White House.

McClellan is clearly mad at Karl Rove and Scooter Libby, both of whom set him up, he thinks, by telling him that they weren't involved in the Valerie Plame thing when it was later revealed they were. Again, he doesn't blame the President - he thinks they lied to him too.