First, I have to give HuffPo credit. I exchanged e-mail with Sam Stein shortly before walking out the door to lunch, and before I had finished my brisket at Capitol Q (just six blocks from my office) my e-mail started buzzing with questions/comments about this post. They work fast.
As for the content, let me expand on what I told Sam.
I have no idea what Scott did or did not experience in the White House and have no way of knowing whether his specific accusations are true or false.
My point to Sam, and the point to my Twitter comment last night, was that Scott has written a book about the nastiness of politics in general and the notion of the permanent campaign specifically, that is right on the money. The excerpts I have read of the book make a very salient and very meaningful point – this town and the culture of constant political battle, do great harm to the process of actually governing.
When you are unwilling to admit a mistake for fear of creating an opening your opposition can exploit for partisan gain, you create a cycle where bad choices become compounded upon one another. I think that is a syndrome that we saw emerge from the Clinton years and grow worse during the Bush years. There is simply no room for honest discussion anymore. There is merely partisan scorekeeping and score settling.
I also believe, as Matthew Dowd noted in the New York Times, that Bush has squandered the second term that 62 million people gave him.
He criticized the president as failing to call the nation to a shared sense of sacrifice at a time of war, failing to reach across the political divide to build consensus and ignoring the will of the people on Iraq. He said he believed the president had not moved aggressively enough to hold anyone accountable for the abuses at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, and that Mr. Bush still approached governing with a “my way or the highway” mentality reinforced by a shrinking circle of trusted aides.
Believe it or not, there are more than a handful of people who work in politics and become involved because they fundamentally believe that we can change the world we live in. Matt referred to the idea in his NYT interview.
“I’m a big believer that in part what we’re called to do — to me, by God; other people call it karma — is to restore balance when things didn’t turn out the way they should have,” Mr. Dowd said. “Just being quiet is not an option when I was so publicly advocating an election.”
I think McClellan’s interview on Today this morning echoed much of that same sentiment. These are people who worked tirelessly to elect a President in which they saw so much more than what was to come. McClellan says they got caught up playing the Washington game. I believe that is true, and I believe almost everyone recognizes that is true.
As I told Sam, I think McClellan’s book should be viewed through that prism. The media and the Administration may portray this as a gotcha perpetrated by Scott, but I think that discounts the larger message. It is that message that I agree with. For that reason, I fear the typical Washington response to discredit the messenger will force us to lose sight of the message.
I am a believer. I think people can change their world by getting involved. Unfortunately, this town tests my faith in that idea every day. Watching Scott being savaged for fighting for that ideal is testing it again today.
This is a very thoughtful post. I am also a believer in changing the world and the importance of the debate of ideas in changing the world. I tended to be a bit more cynical about Scott before reading this post and seeing the Today show interview. I get irritated with people who build thier fortune on disloyalty to those who put them in a position to have a fortune and my initial reaction was to put Scott in that camp.
Unfortunately, I know a number of people from both parties that came to politics to change the world, got people they believed in elected, and then saw those elected officials get caught up in the partisan “gotcha” fight. Many of those people have left government and politics. Their departure makes changing the culture in D.C. very difficult.
I’ll read the book with a different perspective because of your post. Thanks.
I don’t necessarily think McClellan is a disgruntled employee. I do, however, wonder if he was “used” by Soros (Soros connections to Publisher) to chant liberal talking points against Bush during an election season (beginning of the General election), and against a candidate that the opposition is trying to paint as a “third Bush term”?
If his complaint is that “everything is politics, not policy”……and about “continual campaigns”……then he was a pawn (by Soros) in exactly what he came to detest, wasn’t he? And, if that was the real theme of his book…..then why is it one sided against the Bush Administration? Surely he could have used examples from both sides of the political aisle (Rockefeller’s leaked memo, Joe Wilson’s lies, Democrats who questioned Petraeus’ honesty, how Democrats can’t admit the Iraq surge was a success, Democrats who used fake promises to end the Iraq war to get elected in 2006, etc).
I don’t know. Honestly. Only McClellan knows what is in his heart and mind.
But, I certainly see the run up to the Iraq war in a different light. Confronting the enemy was not a politically safe move to make. Why do you think Clinton avoided it even though he admitted war with Iraq was unavoidable? Bush’s policy towards Iraq was a continuation of the Clinton policy. There were plenty of times Bush could have pulled out of Iraq and still called it a victory (even though it wouldn’t have been). But, he didn’t. He did the right thing…..even though it meant a downturn in popular affection toward him. There were so many times Bush could have come out and responded (for political gain) to the crazy liberal attacks from the same Congress that authorized (and supported in the early days) the Iraq War. But he didn’t. He barely defended himself. Instead he just went on to win the war.
I’m still waiting for the “real book” to be written by some bright mind that was a political player in all of this. The one that talks about a shadow government (liberals that work within the halls of the CIA, State Dept, etc and their unholy alliance wtih radical Democrats in power in Congress and elsewhere, who tried to take down an elected sitting President, thwart his policies……….and, yes…….for political gain.
Could Scott have used examples of Democrats engaging in the permanent campaign, I suppose so. The trouble is he didn’t work for Congressional Democrats or the Clinton White House so to do that would be purely speculative based on news accounts. There would not be any authority to his writing and it would have been received as yet another GOP hack firing at the Democrats.
The reason his book is interesting is because he did have such a close relationship to the players and events.
As for the publisher’s ties to Soros, I frankly think that’s grasping at straws in an attempt to blame the Democrats for a Republican’s account of a Republican administration. It’s goofy. You could pick any publisher and find some tenuous connection to some Democrat boogeyman. It’s just not credible. This was the subject of lengthy discussion on Dan Abrams’ program last night.
The fact is, the name on the book is Scott McClellan. The contents of the book were based on the personal experience of Scott McClellan. The person who bears responsibility for the book is Scott McClellan. The fact that his publisher’s third cousin’s wife’s best friend has some connection to a Democrat has little to do with anything. The fact that anyone has even made that claim is exactly the point of Scott’s book.
The ‘permanent campaign’ is all about winning. You win by discrediting any negative charges leveled against you. If a GOP operative writes a book about the actions of a GOP administration you find some ridiculous connection to a Democrat and you assign blame to them. If you don’t think that the connection to Soros was a talking point drafted for and distributed by the GOP to discredit Scott’s book, you’re kidding yourself.
[...] is exactly what I tried to say yesterday in my post here. My point to Sam, and the point to my Twitter comment last night, was that Scott has written a [...]