Scott McClellan and President Bush

When Scott McClellan was press secretary for President Bush, his daily briefings to reporters were frustrating and annoying. McClellan would respond to questions in a monotonous voice, often repeating the same answer over and over again when the journalists tried to rephrase questions in an effort to get at the truth.

Now, long after he should have spoken up about what was really going on, comes a book by McClellan entitled: "What Happened: Inside the Bush White House and Washington's Culture of Deception." McClellan was a long-time Bush loyalist who worked for Bush in Texas. As Press Secretary he stood by Bush and adhered to the Bush line. For this reason, despite whatever criticisms there may be about McClellan’s character, motivation, and tardiness in coming forth, we should pay attention to what he has to say.

McClellan says that at a time when the nation was on the brink of the war in Iraq, the Bush White House made "a decision to turn away from candor and honesty when those qualities were most needed." He says that that President Bush relied on an aggressive "political propaganda campaign" instead of the truth to sell the Iraq war, and that the decision to invade Iraq pushed Bush's presidency "terribly off course.” McClellan calls the Iraqi war a "serious strategic blunder," adding that "the Iraq war was not necessary."

McClellan says that Bush was focused on “accomplish[ing] what his father had failed to do by winning a second term in office,” and adopted a “permanent campaign approach,” which included “never reflecting, never reconsidering, never compromising. Especially not where Iraq was concerned.”

The book by McClellan claims that the President based his misjudgments on the bad advice of men like Dick Chaney and Karl Rove. I have long realized that this president has been a weak pawn in the hands of powerful personalities like Chaney and Rove.

McClellan repeats an accusation that we have heard before about George W. Bush—that he is “uninquisitive.” That is another way of saying that he is unintelligent. Others, including security advisor Richard A. Clarke, and former Secretary of the Treasury Paul O’Neill, have described Bush as “uninquisitive,” “unquestioning,” “uncurious,” and “anti-intellectual.” That would be okay in an ordinary person. In the President of the United States, it is scary.

This president, who sent our soldiers to die needlessly in Iraq, has opposed pay raises for the military, a $40-a-month increase in benefits for military widows, and expanded educational benefits for veterans. Bush has sought to impose on veterans new fees ranging up to $750 for care at veterans’ health-care facilities. In addition, Bush sought to significantly reduce federal support for state-operated veterans’ homes and to impose new limitations on who can be admitted. He has set himself up as a money-saver despite the fact that he never vetoed a single pork-engorged, earmark-stuffed spending bill while the Republicans were in control of Congress.

Recent polls have shown that President Bush has approval ratings averaging about 28 percent. I’m not surprised, but I wonder what kind of people still approve of this dreadful chief executive. There are surely many die-hard conservatives who care more about social issues like abortion and same-sex marriage than about Iraq. But how do you explain John McCain? Surely he ought to know better! McCain went on supporting Bush’s escapade in Iraq long after it became clear to a majority of the American people that we had been badly mislead.

It reminds one of Vietnam. When there were no more lies to tell and no more justifications to offer for the sacrifices and the blood of our youth, Johnson, Nixon, and their apologists made the argument that we could not pull out of Vietnam because our prestige was at stake. They argued that if we left, there would be a blood-bath. Those arguments were false then and they are false now.

McCain has made it a basic part of his campaign to say that pulling out of Iraq now would lead to catastrophe and that Barack Obama wants to surrender in Iraq. No doubt McCain is being advised to pursue this dubious rout by Republican strategists who think that it will be an effective campaign tactic. The answer to it is that we got into the war through lying and deception. Let’s stop the lying and deception and get out now.