Scotty Still Smitten After All

Having listened to several recent interviews with McClellan, I’ve heard him consistently selling two notions in every one of those interviews that have received scant attention.  First, GWB is a good guy with good intentions.  Second, Scotty is a truth teller and not a liar.

How could anyone that is capable of detailing numerous instances of GWB not acting like a good guy with good intentions continue to hold onto that opinion of GWB?  GWB lied and people died.  Lots of people died.  

As for Scotty being a liar, he has an excuse for the substantial evidence that he is a liar.  1) He didn’t know the truth when he lied.  2) He was just doing his job.  3) He was too young and inexperienced for the job of WH Press Secretary.  3) The permanent campaign culture in DC forced him to spin.  4) National 9/11 PTSD.  5)  The media didn’t demand the truth; so, he didn’t bother to give it to them.

He explains away instances of Helen Thomas and David Gregory demanding the truth with #1-3, didn’t/couldn’t know what the hell he was doing.  Then he puts some lipstick on the pig by praising Thomas for being an exemplary WH reporter.  What’s wrong with this?  Only that the best WH reporter couldn’t get the truth in real time when it was most needed.

The obvious incentive for McClennan to sell his new found penchant for truth telling is that he wants his book to sell.  A book that tells us what?  DC and the media suck.  What a revelation.  That there was a rush to war based on fake intelligence information.  Duh!  Cheney was way too aggressive in asserting a link between 9/11 and Iraq.  Wow, that’s a surprise!  Scooter Libby and Karl Rove lied to Scotty.  Snore.

The thing about habitual liars and con-artists is that even their "come to Jesus" moments are inauthentic.  I’m less susceptible than the average person to being taken in by a liar.  Still, I’m not immune.  For example, I don’t recall that David Brock mentioned in "Blinded by the Right" that he acted as Blumenthal’s mole in the right wing political machine.  This leads me to sense that there’s something "off" about Scotty’s book.  Something that doesn’t quite add up.  Ring true.

Superficially, with his book, it appears that Scotty had cut his ties to the BFEE.  For profit and public acclaim and embrace.  But has he?  Are we too believe that the BFEE has lost its ability to pay off and silence family members that have gone off the reservation?   Perhaps I’m too suspicious or remember Watergate too well, to easily swallow an apparent defection from All The President’s Men.  Didn’t happen in Nixon’s day and my money is that it won’t happen this time around.

Ah, you may say, what about John Dean?  Two problems with pointing to Dean as a precedent for defection from the ranks of the President’s coterie.  First, Dean didn’t have a long and deeply committed relationship with Nixon, the man.  Second, his very conservative political ideology didn’t have enough fervor for him to do whatever it takes to advance it.  Third, and possibly most important, Dean was being set up to be the fall guy for Watergate.  Not one of those conditions precedent apply to Scotty.

So, why publish a seemingly sensational expose of the Bush WH?  Particularly if Scotty isn’t, as I suspect, off the rez?   And why now?  As a ruse, it's pitch perfect.  So perfect that it's difficult not to consider that it wasn't accidental.  With that clue, putting together this puzzle isn't all that difficult.  (As it's more elegant than Rove ruses, my wild-ass guess is that a friend of Poppy's was recruited for this task.)