At the White House, Truth is a Casualty
At the risk of taking a Bob Dylan lyric completely out of context, the amphetamine-fueled singer articulated the perfect line about modern presidents’ relationship to truth back in 1965 when he sneered: “Obscenity, who really cares / propaganda, all is phony.”
All is phony, indeed. As usual, phoniness begins at the top. In an excerpt from “What Happened,” a tell-all that won’t be published until April 2008, former White House press secretary Scott McClellan admitted that he may have been President Bush’s accidental propagandist during his undistinguished stint in Washington’s version of the Augean stables:
“The most powerful leader in the world had called upon me to speak on his behalf and help restore credibility he lost amid the failure to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.
“So I stood at the White House briefing room podium in front of the glare of the klieg lights for the better part of two weeks and publicly exonerated two of the senior-most aides in the White House: Karl Rove and Scooter Libby.
“There was one problem. It was not true. I had unknowingly passed along false information. And five of the highest ranking officials in the administration were involved in my doing so: Rove, Libby, the vice president, the president’s chief of staff and the president himself.”
Since posting the excerpt on its Web site, the book’s publisher, PublicAffairs, has already begun its unseemly ritual backpedaling: Of course Mr. McClellan wasn’t saying that he was personally misled by Mr. Bush, no matter what the excerpt indicates. Sure, the language is blunt and declarative, but that’s books by former White House press secretaries for you. Blah, blah, blah!
When the president’s surrogates finish sliming Mr. McClellan for explaining the slippery nature of truth in the Bush White House, the actual text of “What Happened” will probably be drained of its most controversial elements when it finally hits the book skids at Wal-Mart in the spring.
“The president has not and would not ask his spokespeople to pass false information,” said White House press secretary Dana Perino. She said it was difficult for the White House to react to the book excerpt because it wasn’t clear what the passage meant without the context of the entire book.
Who knew that assessing an unflattering comment by a former administration insider required a background in semiotics and linguistic philosophy?
Assuming this story hasn’t completely disappeared by the middle of next week, Ms. Perino will probably begin insinuating that her predecessor either misunderstood his job or has willfully misrepresented — in exchange for a large book advance — the role his former superiors played in the leak of former CIA officer Valerie Plame’s name.
So far, only lefty-oriented blogs and Keith Olbermann, the Don Quixote of broadcast journalism, are making a big deal about the teaser from the book. The mainstream media is either bored by the thought of another plunge into l’affaire Plame or numb at the prospect of cataloguing yet another series of lies by an administration that would get and deserve banner headlines if it ever bothered to tell the truth about anything.
When Mr. McClellan announced last year that he was leaving the administration, Mr. Bush rolled out his corniest bromides for his departing Texas crony whose sweaty forehead had been telegraphing the opposite of what had been coming out of his mouth for years:
“I don’t know whether or not the press corps realizes this, but his is a challenging assignment dealing with you all on a regular basis,” Mr. Bush said, laying it on thick about a guy whose conscience had obviously begun to get to him. The press snickered at being insulted by the commander in chief yet again. “And I thought he handled his assignment with class, integrity. He really represents the best of his family, our state and our country. It’s going to be hard to replace Scott. But, nevertheless, he’s made the decision and I accept it.”
If Scott McClellan and his publisher intended only to indict the White House chain of command, but not the president himself, the best Mr. Bush could expect would be to look out of touch. The publisher chose the most inflammatory excerpt possible to attract media attention. Claiming that Mr. McClellan’s intention is being distorted is a little disingenuous.
When his successor Tony Snow finally writes his own account of his White House years, it will be a guaranteed blockbuster with or without unflattering verdicts about the president. Mr. Snow’s witty stonewalling was an awesome thing to behold.
But we all know that Mr. Snow, a former Fox News talking head, isn’t so blinded by loyalty to his former boss that he would be tentative about criticizing him if he felt compelled to do so. Let me be as bold as to suggest a possible title for a Mr. Snow tell-all: “I Can’t Believe I Actually Took Orders from that Guy.”
Tony Norman can be reached at tnorman@post-gazette.com or 412-263-1631.
Copyright ©1997 - 2007 PG Publishing Co., Inc
We have been converted to the new waw___ Lies are good, Truth is bad. Now we can just accept whatever our Great Leaders tell us without question. Isn`t life grand?
can you believe it? bush, cheney, et al sabotaged one of their own cia operatives to get back at a man who had the audacity to tell the truth.
they are beyond reprehensible. how can you leave them in office for another second? IMPEACH!
(actually ‘impeach’ is too nice a word- IMPALE!
At least Snow doesn’t have to sweat the Title, it’s ostensible: SNOW JOB!
“. . .the book’s publisher, PublicAffairs, has already begun its unseemly ritual backpedaling: Of course Mr. McClellan wasn’t saying that he was personally misled by Mr. Bush, no matter what the excerpt indicates.”
Quoting Otter in Animal House, “You f-cked up. You believed us.”
It’s true, my hateful side has often thought of how nice the public’s SPIKE would look, with all them flys laying eggs in them lying eyes . . .
Oh, the karma
Namaste
I don’t get it. Am I supposed to be shocked by a lying government? We’ve never had another kind, as far as I know.
Does the Bush-Cheney Axis lie more than others in the past? I’ll leave that to someone working on a Ph.D. in U.S. Government lying.
Here’s a little thought: listen to how nasty and shabby and dishonest the candidates running for President are, and ask yourself if that nastiness is going to evaporate if and when one of these nebbishes is elected? No?
TWO BLUE DAY: If you had relatives die during Pearl Harbor attacks, how would you feel now knowing that the gov’t let the attack occur, to force being swept into WAR, and to sweep aside any public resistence for restraint?
We usually notice their lips moving - and assume that they’re LYING - but this administration has purposely delayed Katrina aid to “prove” gov’t incompetence and force privatization and massive profiteering. This is anti-welfare, where the poor get near to nothing, and the rich siphon off billions of OUR tax dollars every day.
Consider that instead of being a force for justice and freedom in this world today (as our gov’t shills tell us), that in fact the USA is the number one terrorist state - bring massive disruptions worldwide of death and economic devastations.
Just continue reading herein and be enlightened to the unmitigated scope of the LIES, and moral turpitude.
Namaste
“We must be the change we wish to see in the world” __ Gandhi
I’m aware of that particular conspiracy theory (re: Pearl Harbor), but unaware it has ever been proven.
I don’t much care which set of lying, cheating megalomaniacs is in power, to tell you the downright truth. Oh, I did care once, but Jimmy Carter got pilloried, so I’m done. Not that I worship Mr. Carter, but he did seem to have some actual principles.
TWO BLUE DAY: I guarantee you that RADAR signals proving the approaching JAP fleet were clearly detected, and sent up the chain of command, where supposedly this new fangled technology was questioned as being accurate - and then no one flew out to take a look?
And even more seriously contradicting ALL naysayers, was how we had completely broken their most highly valued secret codes, and knew that they had just recalled their ambassador from DC. Like that’s ever going to happen during saber rattling - only if WAR is an immediate thing?
Namaste
__ __ __ __ We must be the change
__ __ __ __ we wish to see in the world __ Gandhi
nspire: your “guarantee” is not proof of anything. But then, you know that, don’t you?
I am not one of those who accepts what others say to a greater degree simply because they say it more emphatically.
Of course, that doesn’t mean you are wrong, either.
Frankly, I don’t think it matters either way.
twoblueday: So what’s your point? That a lying government is acceptable because we’ve never had another kind? That we shouldn’t be shocked or even bother trying to change a lying government because it’s always been this way? Or are you just venting your own cynicism and hoping to pass it on to the rest of us?