Scott McClellan – So Much for Loyalty
Posted by Warren Peterson on May 28, 2008
Former Press Secretary Scott McClellan, has written an explosive memoir on his Bush White House days. Why now? He could have waited until Bush left office before making his controversial charges. Indeed, why make the accusations at all? Has he no loyality? I’ve heard several explanations.
Payback: He’s angry at being fired and replaced by talk show host (and journalist) Tony Snow.
Money: Releasing his book now, during a hot presidential race, will sell more books than waiting until Bush leaves office.
Hype: The publisher told him he needs shock and awe to market his book.
Acceptance: Liberal Washington hates George W. Bush. Attacking Bush gains him new friends among the Georgetown set.
Here’s another possible reason. Scott is a young man, barely forty, and he needs a career. TV journalism could offer him a well paying job but first he’d have to earn his Bush Basher stripes. Will his book do that? We’ll know if we see his “deer in the headlights” face as a regular on CNN or another left leaning channel.
Not FOX.
Fred Churchill said
Most in the administration would agree that prior to the book release, McClellan, as a White House communicator for Bush, was terrific. He was a long-term 100% Bush loyalist who held to the party line and managed to say absolutely nothing for three years. Until (as he apparently says in his book)he found out directly from President Bush that Bush had authorized Libby and Cheney to “out” Valerie to the press. McClellan had been assured the opposite was true. The book is payback, don’t you think? Timed to add salt to the open wounds of a presidency’s reputation that is already the lowest since polls have been taken.