Jul. 4th, 2008 at 2:17 AM
Something was bothering me all the way through Scott McClellan's account of his time as Bush White House spokesman. Judging by all of the Republican talking heads that popped up upon its publication, feigning outrage and insisting that McClellan must have lost his mind, I had been expecting details of, at the very least, a secret society of assassins camped out in the Lincoln Bedroom wearing women's lingerie and snuffing out cigarette butts on Lincoln's nose. You start reading, and can't help thinking, "What the heck were they all so upset about?" The news that the White House is secretive? That the White House is completely uncooperative with everyone in the Fourth Estate except for Fox News? That they were involved in the leak of the identity of a CIA operative and George Bush flipped on his promise to punish the guilty parties when he learned who had been involved? That no one of any political persuasion in the entire city of Washington can be trusted to tell the truth?
Gee. Let us all sit down to absorb the shock of THAT news. (*yawn*)
Judging by the Republican outrage, you expected him to bash Republicans throughout the book and let Democrats off scott-free. He didn't. He seems to have genuinely liked and admired most of the Republicans he worked with. He had little use for Democrats, with the sole exception, perhaps, of Ann Richards of Texas. To completely paraphrase one of his observations: "Karl Rove used September 11th as a political maneuvering tool. Aw, that wasn't very nice and he probably shouldn't have done that. But then Hilary Clinton goes and does the exact same thing. DISGUSTING! DISGRACEFUL! We were outraged! The nerve of that manipulative b ..."
Well, you get the idea.
But as I said, something was bothering me. Usually it was a moment when I'd read his version of an event, frown and say, "Yes, but ...". There seemed to be an awful lot of "Yes, but's". I might have attributed the growing collection of "Yes, buts" to merely two people seeing the same event from two different perspectives. And then I realized why his perspective on things was invariably so foreign to me: Scott McClellan didn't know any PEOPLE.
And by that I don't mean he carried on meaningful relationships with his houseplants. I mean that the entire circle of people he interacted with consisted of politicians, strategists, White House operatives, lobbyists and the media. His mother was a politician, and he had cut his political teeth on her campaigns and career in Texas. All of the people he most admired were politicians or strategists. His mentors were politicians or strategists. His friends. Probably most of his neighbors. His passion was politics and campaigning. He'd been groomed for the role of White House spokesman since his highschool days. This was his entire frame of reference.
The only thing missing from that "world view" - were people. Citizens. Ordinary people, with homes and mortgages and pets and apartments and landlords and shrinking paychecks and second hand cars and long commutes and jobs in factories and offices. The majority of us, in other words. For the most part - unless we coincidentally happened to appear as a number in a Gallup Poll - we existed solely as a rather mindless (and largely uneducated) mass who needed to be manipulated, and carefully fed by hand, lest we (with our short attention spans) got restless and started wandering off. We were, in a very real sense, irrelevant to the discussion.
"Yes, but," you argue, since "Yes, but" seems to be the catchphrase in this review, "the book was about being a White House spokesman, not a public advocate. Discussing "people" and their views would be out of scope."
Yes, but ... he was a spokesman - a representative - for the White House. Wouldn't "we the people" be on his radar - somewhere?
Yes, but - apparently, we aren't. Throughout the entire book all you read are reactions of politicians to each other, reactions of the media to politicians, politicians to reporters, strategists to strategists - the detached written version of Bush's disastrous "Katrina flyover in Air Force One" photo - which we learn was the direct result of Karl Rove overriding McClellan, who thought that was a horrible public relations idea. To be fair, I probably shouldn't single out Scott McClellan. I haven't read Ari Fleischer's version of the same job description, or James Carver's version of his time as strategist for the Clinton White House, but I'd be willing to guess that people had very little importance in their worlds, either.
McClellan has already identified the reason for this, and he's right: "people" have no importance in Washington. The "Game" - the art of getting, maintaining and solidifying power at all costs - is everything. How you learn to play the game is everything. The truth is irrelevant in this game. Human beings are irrelevant. Republicans play the game. Democrats play the game. The White House, Congress and the Senate play the game. McClellan calls this "the permanent campaign" - meaning that the same rules that apply to a presidential campaign, which, by very definition, is divisive and manipulative, are simply carried over into government. I prefer to call it by what it really is: a game. Citizens are merely the spectators.
The issue that clarified that for me was the chapter on September 11th.
McClellan's version of where he was and what he was doing when he heard about the World Trade Center attacks is rather vague for someone who claims he'll never forget where he was or what he was doing when it happened. Of course, neither will I - I was in New York City that day, and he can be assured it is engrained in my memory as well. My guess is that at no point was Scott McClellan afraid for his life, so I might even take that one step further and suggest that 9/11 is probably even more deeply engrained into my memory than it is in his, given that it makes random appearances in nightmares even to this day when I'm least expecting it. He was standing dumfounded in a Sarasota elementary school. I was one of the voices screaming in terror when the second plane hit the second tower and I wasn't even watching television.
Seven years have passed since that day, but it isn't the type of event people forget all that easily. So, it came as something of surprise when he, evidently still a well-trained White House spokesman, still misrepresented and deliberately whitewashed the event.
"Ari (Fleisher) also passed along what he knew and what the president was doing as they flew by a circuitous route back to the White House, including stops at two Air Force bases. The Secret Service was concerned that the president had been targeted."
"Flew by a circuitous route." Yes, but. That's a rather sterile version of "disappeared for an entire day". Especially when the story about Bush and Air Force One being targeted was later learned by the Washington Post to be a convenient falsehood invented in the wake of the backlash against Bush's disappearance for the entire day. And McClellan knew that. In fact, it was his job to know that.
Bush wasn't there.
Hell, even short, pudgy, out-of-shape, wheezy Winston Churchill hunkered down with his citizens in London during the Blitz, along with the British monarchs. You didn't see them running out of London for the 'burbs whining about the perpetuation of the government and their need for personal safety while their fellow citizens were being bombed. Bush disappeared and didn't come out again until the all-clear sounded, 10 hours later. It was such a shameful act even Republicans were disgusted and frantically raced around concocting that later discredited falsehood about getting intelligence that Air Force One was a target. (And still the National Press didn't consider that appalling falsehood worthy of more than five minutes coverage).
I don't know how McClellan, the deputy press secretary, missed all of the people crying out, "Where is Bush?", but trust me - New Yorkers had all been asking that very question, all day long. This is one of the many reasons why Republican Rudy Giuliani got as far as he did - despite his unsuitability for the presidency - because Rudy was there. Rudy did what George Bush should have been doing - comforting and leading and informing "his" people in a time of crisis. But Bush wasn't doing that. He was cowering in Air Force One and out of touch for most of the entire day, while Cheney cowered in a bunker, making their hee-hawing at Sadaam Hussein cowering in a bunker all the more ridiculous.
Both of them went missing. Had Bush any guts he would have told his entire Secret Service detail to go *bleep* themselves and override them - the citizens directly in the line of fire needed him. This was his moment to prove his leadership capability - and he blew it. He blew it big-time. I am not pointing fingers at Republicans here - Giuliani and Pataki are both Republicans. I am talking about George Bush, considering himself a "leader of the free world". Yeah, sure he is - when he's out of harm's way. Until then he's the world's most famous chicken.
Scott McClellan's memory of what New York City went through on 9/11? The orchestrated photo-ops (Bush in his hard-hat standing on Ground Zero), which many New Yorkers found sickening and hypocritical. Not because they're Democrats; many of them aren't. But because they recognize cowardice when they see it. Scott considers that moment to be one of the "defining moments of the Bush presidency" and tearfully recounts the "I hear you" soundbite.
Yeah, that was the most relevant memory of September 11th for New Yorkers too, Scott. None of us remember being abandoned for an entire day by the entire executive branch of the federal government, all we remember is Bush with his bullhorn. Right.
Basically, Scott claims to have written this book because he realizes Washington was not what he thought it was. He says he saw through all of the hype and saw the men behind the masks. I guess what bothered me the most reading this is that even that was nonsense. In his conclusion, discussing the media, McClellan says, "The American public hungers for truth" - cites the media's failure to engage in fact checking as one of their downfalls in recent years. He might have tried that himself.
Whether he saw through it all or not, Scott is still playing the game.
No comments:
Post a Comment