McClellan: The Reaction

I have noticed two things in the official reaction from the White House and assorted loyalists to the revelations in Scott McClellan’s book.

First, not one that I’ve heard has actually called the allegations false. They’ve cast aspersions upon Mr. McClellan, trying to cast him as outside the information loop and in other ways cast him as some sort of marginal, clueless and possibly slightly insane person, but never actually saying that anything of substance he says in the book is incorrect.

But second, this coordinated response is so obviously a list of talking points that it becomes very difficult to take seriously. I understand the point of talking points, but when your talking points depart from a list of position points to a script that everyone follows, it becomes comical and really detracts from the veracity of any of the speakers. I know this isn’t the first time this has happened in the Bush administration, but go back and watch any of the pro-White House speakers in the last couple of days, you’ll find their responses consist almost exclusively of the following points:

• “We’re puzzled and saddened. This doesn’t sound like the Scott McClellan we knew. It‘s hard to believe he (wrote/would write) these things”. This is almost always said in the same pitying voice one might say “I knew Aunt Marge was starting to fade, but I never thought I’d see the day when she’d defecate in her own pants”.


• “Scott wasn’t really in on any of the big meetings, we just briefed him on what to release to the press”, in other words “This guy doesn’t know anything, you can’t trust him.” And by the way, why would Dana Perino and Ari Fleischer be so quick to defend the White House, when by extension this talking point says some pretty bad things about them and their position as well.


• “We didn’t know Scott had any of these concerns. If he had them, he really should have mentioned them to someone, and he didn’t as far as we’re aware.” Ari Fleischer went so far as to say that if McClellan had these concerns he really had a duty not to take the position, completely ignoring the fact that it’s possible, likely even, that McClellan came to understand things about his employer in the course of his job that he didn’t understand before he had it, or when he was simply a deputy to Fleischer.

It’s really amazing, the reaction is those three items, every time, worded only slightly differently, but all three are there every time. The word “puzzled” comes up more often than a random sample of people would likely use it. Not one person seems to think this sounds like the Scott McClellan they knew, and amazingly to a person, they all wonder why he never expressed any of his misgivings to them or someone above him.

The problem, though, is that as a coordinated message, it makes me wonder what any of them think privately. So many of the quotes of McClellan’s book that have been leaked deal with message control and the lack of open information dissemination, and I think it’s extremely telling that the reaction to a book accusing them of tight fisted control of message and information flow is an extremely tight fisted control of message and information flow. No one deviates from the script, even ex-employees like Fleischer and Karl Rove.

Liam.