I'll Tell You What Happened...

I read What Happened: Inside the Bush White House and Washington's Culture of Deception by Scott McClellan, the former White House press secretary. When the book was released, current and former members of the Bush administration called it the whinings of a disgruntled former employee. Having read the book, I don't think that is the case at all.

As we all heard in the news when the book came out, Scott McClellan calls the war in Iraq unnecessary, the Bush administration not completely honest, and the press irresponsible. He says his faith in God drove him to write the book. If you don't remember the sound bytes and newspaper quotes, I refer you to the first chapter of the book to refresh your memory. No surprise that that is what made the news. When news of the book broke, I don't imagine anyone read the whole thing first. Having finished the book, that fact is plainly obvious to me.

What Scott McClellan provides the reader in What Happened is a summary of the history of George W. Bush and his administration starting with its formation while Bush was governor of Texas, through the campaign and the first five years of the Bush Dynasty Part II up until Scott McClellan resigned as Press Secretary on April 26, 2006. Nothing in the book is anything we haven't already heard. It is an alternate perspective on the news out of Washington from 2001 to 2006. While billed as a “tell-all” narrative of the happenings in the White House, not much of the behind-the-scenes dirt makes it into the book because I don't believe Scott McClellan was privy to that much that he didn't already tell the White House Press Corps.

Throughout the book, Scott McClellan refers to the “permanent campaign,” whereby the president and his aides operate the government in the same way they operated the run for the presidency. Instead of governing and upholding the campaign promises of bipartisanship and “cleaning up Washington,” the Bush administration has spent the last eight years deeply entrenched in a campaign to manipulate public opinion and to market and sell radical policy (I paraphrase). Scott McClellan blames Richard Nixon's administration for creating the permanent campaign, and he blames the Clinton administration for perpetuating it, legitimizing it and allowing it to become what it was by 2001. Finally, he blames George W. Bush and his administration for not doing anything to fix it. Scott McClellan appears to understand that he was part of the problem. He wants his book to be part of the solution.

Scott McClellan concludes his narrative by making a series of suggestions for alleviating the political influence over public policy. The primary idea that he proposes is to create a position in the senior White House staff to oversee executive honesty (I paraphrase). McClellan's idealistic approach sounds great to me, but frankly I find that oxymoron as hilarious as you do. I think ending the book was the main purpose of his conclusions. Let's draw our own conclusions with this new plethora of information on the Bush administration and the last eight years of United States History.

First, the American people got sold a bill of goods when we got convinced that we needed to go to war in Iraq. I could have told you that in 2003. Some tried to, but the Bush administration did everything it could to make sure no one listened. The whole Valerie Plame situation was orchestrated by the Bush administration to shut Joseph Wilson up when he tried to tell us that.

Second, Scott McClellan was right. The media is irresponsible. Most of the nincompoops in this country would rather see “Real World: The White House” rather than actually understand what is going on in our government, which would love to run your life for you if you'll let it. Since that's what sells ads for penis drugs and something they call beer, that's what we get, which does a severe disservice to the American people, and indeed the world. Now, people are protesting and screaming “Oh my God! You can't let those gay homosexuals get married!” when they should be crying out “Holy shit! We're holding a country under siege for its oil and its strategic location next door to Iran, a country that would like a more efficient and less polluting source of power. And a bomb, probably."

Third, George W. Bush is in over his head, and has been the entire time he has occupied the White House. It's not that he's stupid. He's not. It's just that he's incompetent. Bush was a good governor in Texas. The Texans loved him. The United States of America is not Texas. Everything is not big in the United States of America. Especially the fine print, which, as it turns out, is monstrous.