McClellan Spins Himself, Huff Should Do Same

Scott McClellan--I saw the video of Scott McClellan's interview with Meredith Viera of The Today Show. I don't remember Dick Cheney or Richard Perle ever getting grilled like that in the mainstream media. McClellan actually comes off pretty well in the interview--more an average, everyday guy who got to work for the White House than anything else. He wasn't particularly good at spinning when he was press secretary, but his relative awkwardness comes off well during the interview. Support for the war in Iraq has dropped from 70% right before the invasion to something like 30%. My take on McClellan is that he's gone through a version of the same process of gradually rejecting President Bush that 40% of the American public has also gone through. It's just that McClellan is going to get a fat royalty check for his trouble.

Blogger--Promote Thyself. Arianna Huffington wonders about McClellan's moral authenticity because McClellan came out against Bush's conduct of the White House five years after it would have meant anything.

It's George Tenet déjà vu all over again. How many times are we going to have a key Bush administration official try to wash the blood off his hands -- and add a chunk of change to his bank account -- by writing a come-clean book years after the fact, pointing the finger at everyone else while painting himself as an innocent bystander to history who saw all the horrible things that were happening but, somehow, had no choice but to go along?

But why bother? How many hidden saints have been serving at the top of the Bush administration anyway?

What Huffinton should be emphasizing is that war opponents and left-wing bloggers like herself have been right about the Bush administration's propoganda campaign to promote the war all along and that it's time for the mainstream media to end its near total embargo on war opponents.

Huffington gets in a little plug for herself in relation to McClellan's comments on the media.

McClellan points an accusatory finger at the mainstream media -- he calls them "enablers" and says they were too easy on the administration during the selling of the war:

"The national press corps was probably too deferential to the White House and to the administration in regard to the most important decision facing the nation during my years in Washington, the choice over whether to go to war in Iraq. 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."

Great point, Scotty. We and many others made it back in 2003.

But that little shout out to herself isn't nearly enough and the fact that somebody as savvy as Huffington downplays such a key self-promotional moment is an indication of how far the left has to go in effectively promoting itself.