Skeptics, Cynics, and the Bush Administration
May 28, 2008, 12:14 pm
Posted by David Gibson
The release of former White House spokesman Scott McClellan’s memoir of his tenure as President Bush’s spokesman adds to the discussion of the pope’s comments to journalists that Paul Moses posted below. I suppose we shouldn’t be shocked by stories of the Administration’s manipulations at this point, but the Washington Post account is still stunning in the well, cynicism displayed by the president. The title says it all: “What Happened: Inside the Bush White House and Washington’s Culture of Deception.” It looks like Bush will be meeting the pope again in Rome next month, so maybe the pontiff will reprise some of his remarks then.
[Editorial intervention...a clip worth watching (H/T TPM)--GG:]
Continuing from the thread below, I thought we could compile a list of “disgruntles.” Start say with Paul O”Neill. Would Christi Todd Whitman qualify?
Then we’d know who all the greedy partisans are who are keeping us from the real truth about the GWB inner circle group.
Interesting bit from the NYT story:
Mr. McClellan does not exempt himself from failings — “I fell far short of living up to the kind of public servant I wanted to be” — and calls the news media “complicit enablers” in the White House’s “carefully orchestrated campaign to shape and manipulate sources of public approval” in the march to the Iraq war in 2002 and 2003.
From the book, as noted by Glenn Greenwald:
http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2008/05/28/mcclellan/
An on-line poll this afternoon shows some disagreement about McClellan’s motives – though a majority think he’s “making amends”, but over 80% think he’s telling it like it is about how the Bush White House misled folks.
The White House will focus on his motives. They are already pushing the “disgruntled worker” bit, whatever that’s supposed to mean.
McClellan on the whole is not telling us anything new (just as the White House is not doing anything new in the way they are trying to spin this.)
An attack on motives is often an attempt to distract from substance. Nothing unusual here.
There seem to be two concepts associated with attributions of cynicism. (1) The cynic is one who is shameless and without a sense of decency (like a dog). (2) The cynic is one who thinks everyone (else) is shameless and without a sense of decency. The cynicism of Bush seems to fall under (1).
A calculus between cynicism and skepticism as outlined in Paul Mose’s post just below is in order. Today, the book apparently sailed to No. 1 on Amazon.
This leads to the obvious question about why McClellan waited for best sellerdom to reveal, for example, that Karl Rove and Scooter Libby had an unusual tete a tete as the Valerie Plame scandale was developing. Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald would have been interested in that story. Is this about civic responsibility, best sellerdom, and getting a job in the next Republican Administration–in case there is one?
I’ve long felt that political reporters are too quick to credit an attack on the motive of someone making a charge. It has to be considered, but the real question is whether the claim being advanced is true.
McClellan is not telling us anything new. True. We all knew Bush, Chaney Rove lied profusely and knowingly. Ditto, many of us have been saying how the media sold out. But this story is HUGE!
“In this case, the “liberal media” didn’t live up to its reputation. If it had, the country would have been better served.”
This is heavy stuff and so true. The liberal media tanked also. Shock and awe was almost worshipped. I will be interested to see what the NY Times will say editorially. Reporters are now admitting how pressure was put on to put the war in a good light.
I would really hesitate on trying to discredit McClellan now. That would be to continue the same king of sellout. CNN is clealy showing tonight, as I see it, how McClellan was a changed person after he noticed how Rove was blatantly lying to him on Plame and the CIA. No way anyone will want him now in a new Republican administration.
Anderson Cooper is now saying on CNN that all administrations lie (spin). I think he senses how he is part ot that irresponsible media.
Maybe we will return to having the great press we used to have. The repugnancy of Fox flagwaving and CNN and others following suit marked an extremely depressing and dramatic turn in responsible reporting. Hopefully this can be corrected and we can thank McClellan. He is definitely right until proven wrong. This is an opportunity.
Bush may be secondary now. This may be helpful in restoring the media to responsibility.
The media is the point in all this.
Here is this morning’s editorial in the NY Times. The real message is the liberal media, and liberals in general, got caught sleeping. Big Time. All that ‘strategic crap” propounded by “experts” ad nauseam. Will the lesson be learned? This editorial is not encouraging. McClellan does not have to be a saint to be right. (Then again how many saints were wrong.)
“Scott McClellan’s memoir is the latest entry in the latter genre. Among his far-too-late admissions, President Bush’s former spokesman reveals that he knew the war in Iraq was “a serious strategic blunder,” but the White House decided the best course was “to turn away from candor and honesty.”
This is the same Scott McClellan who presumably had a big role in creating the White House’s communications strategy and joined in the “culture of deception” with such zeal that we lost count of the times he ridiculed critics of the war and questioned their patriotism.
Mr. McClellan also knew that the White House’s handling of Hurricane Katrina was a disaster. No doubt he misspoke when he sneeringly accused those who questioned the administration’s serial failures of playing a partisan “blame game.”
The president’s retired mouthpiece now admits that it wasn’t true when he said that Karl Rove and I. Lewis Libby Jr. were not involved in leaking the identity of a C.I.A. operative, Valerie Wilson. But he blames Mr. Rove, Mr. Libby and “possibly” Vice President Dick Cheney for deceiving him. He says they also lied to the president.
For all of its self serving, the book does serve one good purpose: It is a reminder that we still do not know precisely how far Mr. Bush, Mr. Cheney and the others were willing to wade into that “culture of deception” to sell Americans on the disastrous Iraq war.
The Senate Intelligence Committee was supposed to answer that question years ago by comparing what officials claimed about Iraq — its missing weapons of mass destruction and Saddam Hussein’s hyped ties with Al Qaeda — with what they knew.
Senator Pat Roberts, the former Republican chairman, tried to make sure the report never was completed. The current Democratic chairman, Senator John Rockefeller IV, is expected to finally issue it next week. We’ll be interested to see how Scott McClellan comes across.”
Paul Moses said: I’ve long felt that political reporters are too quick to credit an attack on the motive of someone making a charge. It has to be considered, but the real question is whether the claim being advanced is true.
Jean says: Amen and bravo! Good reporters do not pretend to be able to detect motives and feelings much less the state of anyone’s soul. Observable facts, verifiable info are the only things “in bounds” here. Though some skepticism about the book ought to be generating some probing questions directed at Mr. McClellan.
Even Charlie Gibson managed a couple such questions on the network news last night, in between helping that girl in Iowa find a wedding dress blown away by the tornado (gosh, I could hardly sleep worrying about THAT one) and short-sheeting a story about an el derailment that ought to have sparked some discussion about the state of public transit in the midst of high gas prices.
Great video clip, Grant. Thanks for the intervention. I think McClellan’s charges can (hopefully) bring to light a series of discussions about the White House, the media, and loyalty.
I do think the media coverage of the Iraq War run-up, and the entire Bush presidential career, highlights the dangers of a “false” objectivity–that is, trying so hard to appear fair to both sides that the party that is patently wrong or even incomprehensible (that’d be Bush) is given the same deference as if he were presenting facts.
Showing no bodies, quieting grieving parents, ignoring soldiers funerals, and then when the torture blew up in their faces, McClellan asking the media to be “discreet.” Talk about wanting to throw up. McClellan should NOT be the story. The facts he relates is the point.
“The collapse of the administration’s rationales for war, which became apparent months after our invasion, should never have come as such a surprise. . . . In this case, the “liberal media” didn’t live up to its reputation. If it had, the country would have been better served.”
Ouch!! Pretend surprise again, Anderson Cooper.
Tacitus, who just said certain things so well wrote: “Solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant.” They make a desert and call it peace.
All of a sudden a few positives in Iraq is turning into justification. One would think there would be more humility in the media. As the saying goes. The Media has blood on its hands, also.
Bill Moyers had a program a while back featuring reporters from a smal lpaper (I beleive in Baltimore area) that severely critiques the run up to Iraq, but ther voices would not be found in the mainstream press.
So yes, the media are to blame for their lack of pressing on, though mainstreamers will only blame the White House, not themselves.
Corporate control of media and tols of power and control by GWB and cohort all play significan troles in this. And I wonder how many of us were gullible, say to Colin Powell at the UN?
David, I think one of the problems with the coverage leading up to the Iraq war was that dissenting voices were marginalized. I had done an article in Commonweal at the time on how the U.S. bishops’ statements against the war got almost no coverage, in contrast to the situation before the first Iraq war. In retrospect, I think that it was part of a larger trend in the coverage. In that sense, the coverage failed even to be “objective” or, um, “fair and balanced.” The video posted above is very revealing.
Also of note are the various expressions of regret and apologies from many of these media outlets–the Washington Post, NYT, New Republic come to mind immeditaely–for what they acknowledged was a journalistic failure.
…various expressions of regret and apologies from many of these media outlets–the Washington Post, NYT, New Republic come to mind immmediately–for what they acknowledged was a journalistic failure.”
David can you give some references or URL for these acknowledgments?
Anyone who wanted to knew all this at the time. The tight-lipped McClellan always struck me as playing dead. There is deep, deep culpability in the media’s failure to question and expose the lies fed to a gullible, brainwashed public by this most cynical of Administrations. Like CNN playing “Singin’ in the Rain” with their Katrina reportage when they should have been warning the people of New Orleans to evacuate, news organizations never apologize for their criminal frivolity. All they seem to care about is immediate profit.
I watched Colin Powell’s notorious UN smoke and mirrors speech live on 5 Feb 2003. Its mendacity was pretty transparent. I even noticed a mistake in his commentary on an intercepted conversation in Arabic. He made much of the fact that one of the speakers asked the other repeated the word WIRELESS in “the WIRELESS message” as if struck by it; but of course in Arabic word order it would the “the message the wireless”, so that the fellow was merely repeating the last word. The favorite word of the media in greeting this speech — which directly caused the loss of thousands of American and Iraqi lives, and left Powell living with a shattered conscience — was the word: “compelling”. A press that know no responsibility is a bane, and democracy cannot survive with such a press. The US press at the moment is obsessed with the trivialities of the preposterously drawn-out presidential campaign and is giving no information or critique about matters of greater moment. The US presidential campaign has become a circus, a substitute for real political debate; it must be curtailed.
Bill M–I don’t have the dates for the media mea culpas, but will try to dig them up this weekend. They shouldn’t be that hard to find.
Here’s an admission from The New York Times
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9503E1D7143AF935A25754C0A9629C8B63
And here’s a long, front-page story by Howard Kurtz analyzing the coverage of the Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A58127-2004Aug11.html
A condition of forgiveness of sins is the firm amendment to go and sin no more.
I haven’t heard that from McClellan as of yet. Once a puta/o, always a puta/o until the change is noticeable over time.
An American colleague suggests that McClellan like Powell is plagued by conscience and cannot sleep.
A Scottish colleague scoffs at this, sees McClellan as an opportunist out for a quick buck.