May 28, 2008

Et Tu, Scott?

By now I'm sure you've heard about former White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan's book. The Politico reports it's a scathing memoir. It sounds like he's basically calling President Bush an incompetent liar. With friends like McClellan who needs enemies.

I never liked McClellan as press secretary. He wasn't good at his job. I was happy to see him leave and Tony Snow take over. (As a side note, I heard that Tony Snow had to cancel a speaking engagement due to illness and I hope he's okay.)

If you were working for the President and you believed he was a liar, why would you take the job of press secretary? Why continue working for him at all? I certainly wouldn't. It's puzzling. What a hypocrite. As reported by ABC News McClellan had this to say about Richard Clarke's tell-all book:

McCLELLAN: Well, why, all of a sudden, if he had all these grave concerns, did he not raise these sooner? This is one-and-a-half years after he left the administration. And now, all of a sudden, he's raising these grave concerns that he claims he had. And I think you have to look at some of the facts. One, he is bringing this up in the heat of a presidential campaign. He has written a book and he certainly wants to go out there and promote that book. Certainly let's look at the politics of it. His best buddy is Rand Beers, who is the principal foreign policy advisor to Senator Kerry's campaign. The Kerry campaign went out and immediately put these comments up on their website that Mr. Clarke made. ...

Q: Scott, the whole point of his book is he says that he did raise these concerns and he was not listened to by his superiors.

McCLELLAN: Yes, and that's just flat-out wrong. …When someone uses such charged rhetoric that is just not matched by the facts, it's important that we set the record straight. And that's what we're doing. If you look back at his past comments and his past actions, they contradict his current rhetoric. I talked to you all a little bit about that earlier today. Go back and look at exactly what he has said in the past and compare that with what he is saying today.

Here we have an unreliable, hypocritical man, who was bad at his job. Why should we believe him?

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