Oct 25, 2008
Scott McClellan’s Road to Damascus
I have a lot of sympathy for people in situations like the one in which Scott McClellan, press-secretary to President George W. Bush from 2003 to 2006, must to have found himself when it became clear that Bush and his circle had repeatedly mislead their press-secretary so as to aid him in misleading the press without compunction—and, worse, that this duplicity was the product not of an innocent ignorance à la Oliver Stone’s “W.,” but of a concerted and intentional effort. If McClellan “believed” in Bush with the ardency necessary to take a job as his press secretary (believed in Bush in the way that those around Obama are said to “believe” in him, or the way those around Dean four years ago were said to “believe” in him: believed that he was worth following and giving up your professional and often personal life to), coming to that realization would be incredibly painful for McClellan, and he’d deny it, deny himself, with escalating vehemence until the shelter of excuses he’d built himself to remain loyal and true to Bush came crashing down on him.
This crash may not have happened until well after he left the job. If it happened while he had the job, he may, we cannot deny, have been in a position from which he could expose the duplicity; but simply to make it through the day with his sanity, he absolutely couldn’t allow himself to cede the notion that Bush could be being duplicitous. For McClellan as an individual, it was an inadmissible possibility by necessity. Admitting it would mean entirely rewriting himself; it would mean admitting to himself that his legacy as a public presence, or at least the part of it people will remember, largely amounted a set of poorly choreographed distortions.
It’s likely that many within the Bush Administration—especially now, when the effects of its philosophical and practical failings, and Americans’ readiness to be rid of it, are so palpably felt—have undergone, are undergoing, or will undergo variations on that experience: losing faith in a leader who not only isn’t as positively transformative as he appeared, but is dishonest and disingenuous to boot. But McClellan’s must be the one of the worst. For four years, he was paid to be the cipher of Bush’s duplicity. He wasn’t just deceived; he was deceived into deceiving, and all while deceiving himself that nothing of the sort was afoot, trusting in the long-compromised yet somehow still compelling integrity of the men and women he served.
Reacting to McClellan’s recently-released book, which has been received as a frank rebuke of the approaches and actions of the administration leadership, Karl Rove said, “this doesn’t sound like Scott. It really doesn’t. Not the Scott McClellan I have known for a long time.” This makes sense; a revelation of that magnitude should, precisely, effect an effective rebirth. McClellan’s has made him a into man who well deserves our solicitude and respect.