The company man says nothing. He does what he is told, he doesn't ask questions, and he averts the eyes to the unethical practices of his masters. And why wouldn't he? His masters pay him a lot of money, and no one wants to be remembered as disloyal, or a traitor. The hero is the man who steps forward and tells us how the sausage is made.
For years, we laughed and laughed at Scott McClellan, the hapless spokesman for the Bush administration. Scottie stood before the Washington press corps and fended off questions like a skilled tennis player. We knew that he was just a front man, but he seemed pathetic all the same. Can't they find a better guy than this?
The company man stays quiet, but the hero does not. Scott McClellan came forward with his memoirs, telling us what we already knew (Bush is corrupt, the war is a scam, et al), but what makes his tell-all a surprise is that he was not a policymaker like the others whose books blew the lid off the Bush fun-house. Scottie was the last one the tell the truth.
Scott McClellan, the former White House spokesman turned Bush administration critic, took to Capitol Hill on Friday to decry an insular and secretive White House that he said lied about the leaking of a CIA officer's name and "overstated" intelligence in the rush to war in Iraq.McClellan, who served as President Bush's press secretary from 2003 to 2006 and is the author of a controversial new book, also said Bush squandered the public's trust by not following through on promises to fire those involved in disclosing the identity of CIA officer Valerie Wilson - also known as Valerie Plame - and to publicly divulge details about the case.
"The continuing cloud of suspicion over the White House is not something I can remove, because I know only one part of the story," McClellan said during several hours of testimony before the House Judiciary Committee. "Only those who know the underlying truth can bring this to an end. Sadly, they remain silent."
McClellan was a longtime Bush aide whose best-selling book, "What Happened: Inside the Bush White House and Washington's Culture of Deception," has caused a political uproar. It contains sharp criticism of the president and his senior aides on a variety of topics, including the handling of prewar intelligence and the bungled response to Hurricane Katrina.
Memoirs like this are common in our political world. An analysis in this weekend's New York Times Book Review focuses on the many times that people came forward with ugly relevations about the presidents they worked for. Some of these memoirs changed the way we viewed those presidents forever. Who can forget Richard Clarke's book a few years ago which revealed that Bush was looking for war with Iraq right after 9/11, and that Bush and his cronies ignored the warning signs of an imminent terrorist attack? The point of the Times article is that these books are not all that great, and they fail as literary efforts. Meanwhile, some idiot Republican Congressmen attacked McClellan at the hearing yesterday because he was disloyal. But the real moral of the story is that some secrets cannot be kept under wraps. You can't keep these secrets forever, in politics especially. It's like holding in an upset stomach. What compels a nice boy like Scott McClellan to spill the beans on his former boss? I call it American diarreah.
