McClellan's Memoir

Former White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan's book about his time spent with the Bush Administration comes out next week, and today I read the excerpted preface of the book. The memoir is apparently harsh on Bush and insiders such as Cheney, Rove, Rice, and others, as well as on himself. In reading the excerpt, what appears to be a main theme of the book is a good example of why I can be optimistic about the possibility of an upcoming Obama presidency, as opposed to either HRC or McCain:

Most of our elected leaders in Washington, Republicans and Democrats alike, are good and decent people. Yet too many of them today have made a practice of shunning truth and the high level of openness and forthrightness required to discover it. Most of it is not willful or conscious. Rather it is part of the modern Washington game that has become the accepted norm.

As I explain in this book, Washington has become the home of the permanent campaign, a game of endless politicking based on the manipulation of shades of truth, partial truths, twisting of the truth, and spin. Governing has become an appendage of politics rather than the other way around, with electoral victory and the control of power as the sole measures of success. That means shaping the narrative before it shapes you. Candor and honesty are pushed to the side in the battle to win the latest news cycle.

Of course, deception in politics is nothing new. What’s new is the degree to which it now permeates our national political discourse.

Much of it is barely noticeable and seemingly harmless, accepted as par for the course. Most of it is done unconsciously or subconsciously with no malicious intent other than to prevail in the increasingly destructive game of power and influence.

Some of it is self-deceit. Those engaging in it convince themselves to believe what they are saying, though deep down they know candor and honesty are lacking. Instead of checking their political maneuvering at the door when the campaign ends, they retain it as part of the way Washington works. The deception it spawns becomes the cancer on our political discourse, greatly damaging the ability of our elected leaders to govern effectively and do what is best for America.

Too many politicians and their followers have become passionately committed to a preconceived, partisan view of reality that allows little room for compromise or cooperation with the other side. The gray nuances of truth are lost in the black-and-white ideologies both parties embrace. Permanent division, gridlock, and a general inability to constructively address the big challenges we all face inevitably follow.

...

In exploring this syndrome and the way it helped damage at least one administration, I’ve tried to contribute to our understanding of Washington’s culture of deception and how we, the American people, can change it.

As an extreme outsider to the whole Washington scene it is of course difficult for someone like me to really know how genuine campaign promises of "change" and the like are; as McClellan points out, even Bush's 2000 campaign promised to change the Washington culture. However, I do have some measure of hope (appropriately enough, or maybe I'm just brainwashed) that as a relative newcomer to the Washington scene and someone with a clear message and respectable track record, Obama and his team would be able to at least start breaking the cycle of political deception and misguided priorities that McClellan laments.

Of course, as Karl Rove pointed out on Fox News, it could have been a rogue ghost-writer:

“First of all, this doesn’t sound like Scott. It really doesn’t,” he said. “Not the Scott McClellan I’ve known for a long time. Second of all, it sounds like somebody else. It sounds like a left-wing blogger." (Hey, that's me! And also, phew! - that sounds exactly like the Karl Rove I've known for a long time, so we don't have to worry about any misquoting there.)

Looks to be an interesting book, at the least. Let me know what you think if anyone reads it.