Et tu, Scott? Bush’s press aide turns on his boss

James Forsyth

5 July 2008

James Forsyth talks to Scott McClellan, former press secretary to the President, about his new book attacking the Bush administration, its methods and its deceits

These revelations made McClellan’s job, which — to be frank — he was not much good at to begin with, virtually impossible. At press briefing after press briefing in the White House McClellan received beatings so severe that a boxing referee would have stopped the bout after only a couple of questions.

McClellan admits that this left him ‘very disillusioned’. This feeling was exacerbated by the way he was forced to leave his job, which he was planning to do in the near future anyway. In the book McClellan writes about the moment when the new chief of staff told him he had decided he needed to be replaced: ‘My emotional response was strong and immediate. I thought to myself: He’s ready to throw me to the wolves. I thought about how long I had worked for the President, about how loyal I had been to him, about how I threw myself in front of the bus during the controversy over the Valerie Plame leak — how I sacrificed my own credibility for the sake of the administration. And now he doesn’t even care to let the current storm blow over. Thanks for everything Scott — and don’t let the door hit you on the way out.’

Today, what rankles with McClellan is his feeling that he was made to walk the plank for others’ errors. ‘The first people to turn to for blame or responsibility are the communicators, that’s the nature of the way things work, when in reality I think it is more the policies that were the problem,’ he says. However, McClellan’s spin here is rather self-serving. At the time his departure was seen as proof that the new chief of staff wanted to move away from the reliance on loyal Texans and instead hire more competent people. When I try to put this to McClellan, he shies away from the question: there are obviously limits to his willingness to indulge in self-examination.

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David Short

July 3rd, 2008 2:32pm Report this comment

It's not about money.

It's shameful for someone to turn on the President, who represents the people, and who is also the Commander-in-Chief, when that person has been in service to the President.

It is an insult to the office.

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