In his new book "What happened", former Bush administration press secretary Scott McClellan is apparently much harsher than anticipated in his criticism of policy and execution failures. In one sense, this expose should have greater impact than earlier works such as Richard Clarke's book, because mcClellan was the loyal but disappointed insider, rather than a disenchanted and disloyal outsider.
But in the broader sense, this is too late to change the minds of most americans, because we have already changed our minds about Bush. McClellan's accusation that Bush was in denial for a week after katrina? No surprise there, we saw him on TV. It looks like Karl Rove failed to tell the truth on the Valerie Plame thing? Duh. The Iraq war was set up by a propaganda blitz? Really, who does not know that by now. Okay, there are around 30% of americans who still support the Decider, how about them?
Once again, no big deal. Prepare yourself for a chorus of rationalizations.
"Okay, so he was a bit sloppy, at least he was better than Gore or Kerry would have been"
"I don't care if he lied us into iraq, we had to do it to show the islamics who's boss"
"If McClellan knew about this stuff, he should have said something to his boss back in the day. He just wants to sell books"
Sure, we in the 70% understand how wrong those 3 sentences are, but prepare to hear them this week. Imagine mcClellan telling Bush, a man he had always idolized, that he is acting like a buffoon and needs to shape up. Not going to happen, and it's not McClellan's job anyway.
On the other hand, the historians are going to read this book, and they are not going to ask silly, rationalizing questions. Bush, you once said that you would accept the verdict of history. Still sure about that, dude?
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Comments: 10
They'll finally ride off into the sunset leaving nothing behind other than the blood-stained pathways of their eight years of "glory". The chapters in our history books that cover these past eight years should be blank pages; they don't deserve even the paper...............
I do agree with your summation of McClellan, tho.
The Book I would really love to read is Colin Powell's. The General seemed like he was the only one concerned about the truth. That is why he was kept out of the loop.
Accomplices, all of them.
But in reality, had this war been easily won, not many would question our reason for it. That's what Bush expected, he misunderestimated the final results.