An extended interview on this morning’s Today Show:
The former Bush administration pitchman making explosive election-year charges about how the White House handled the Valerie Plame case and built the case for invading Iraq said Thursday that he went to Washington to change it and became “disillusioned” when he realized he was just a pawn in the never-ending political game.
“The larger message has been sort of lost in the mix… The White House would prefer I not speak out openly and honestly about my experiences, but I believe there is a larger purpose,” Scott McClellan, the chief spokesman for the White House from 2003-2006, told TODAY co-host Meredith Vieira exclusively during his first interview since snippets from his new memoir hit the Internet on Tuesday.
“I had all this great hope that we were going to come to Washington and change it… Then we got to Washington, and I think we got caught up in playing the Washington game the way it is being played today,” said McClellan, who made only passing references to Bush himself.
There’s no question that McClellan has a point here. Bush the campaigner talked about being “a uniter, not a divider”, but the past seven years have been as partisan as American politics have ever been, perhaps even more so. There’s responsibility for that on both sides, of course, but among the more disturbing allegations that McClellan makes his is suggestion that the White House handled the case for war the same way you would handle an election campaign — meaning that the only objective is winning the argument and denouncing those who disagree with you, regardless of what the facts might be.
The fact that American blood and treasure have been sacrificed for what was basically a publicity campaign based on faulty premises is something that should bother every American regardless of what their current position on the war might be.
Here’s the video:
