This column was written and published on odwyerpr.com in November 2007.
Let’s suppose you were the most hapless presidential press secretary ever to don the pads to do battle with the White House press corps.
You were berated for wimpiness, for monotonously parroting administration talking points, for whining, for repeating “no comment” till your hair hurt. You were called a “human piñata” by one detractor and forced, ignominiously, to slink out of the position when those around the president insisted he get a stronger man.
How could you make it any worse?
Simple. By giving up your one remaining vestige of self-respect –loyalty to the chief.
Reintroducing Scott McClellan, a nice but troubled man, whose three-year stint as President George W. Bush’s press secretary served as a textbook illustration of how not to practice effective PR.
Scott McClellan
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Last week it was revealed that in his forthcoming book – every disgraced public figure these days writes a memoir to defend rotten performance – McClellan claims higher ups in the White House lied to him about Karl Rove’s and Scooter Libby’s involvement in the Valerie Plame CIA leak.
At the time of the leak, in 2003, McClellan tried to parry the rantings of a rabid dog press corps by denying any White House involvement in the revelation of Plame’s identity.
“There was one problem,” with his denial, McClellan now writes, “it was not true.”
Not only that, but McClellan also writes that “five of the highest-ranking officials in the administration” personally fed him the lie.
He evidently doesn’t name the five, but three are clear.
1. Andrew Card, White House Chief of Staff.
2. Karl Rove, Assistant to the Vice President.
3. Scooter Libby, Assistant to the Vice President.
That leaves two other Scott McClellan liars in the George Bush/Dick Cheney Administration.
Any guesses?
Predictably, the leak of the McClellan memoir has fed right into the hands of Democratic presidential candidates eager to expose the hypocrisy of the Bush White House.
Connecticut Sen. Chris Dodd summed up the Thanksgiving Day goody dropped in the lap of the Dems, “If in fact the President of the United of States knowingly instructed his chief spokesman to mislead the American people, there can be no more fundamental betrayal of the public trust.”
In the days to come, as the debate on the McClellan expose picks up steam, we will no doubt be treated to the video return of that lamentably lugubrious bunch who matriculated in the mosh pit that was the Plame controversy –Jukin’ Joe Wilson, Jerky Judy Miller, Crotchety Bob Novak, and Vivacious Valerie herself.
I can’t wait.
But what does this book tell us about the protagonist himself, the aggrieved and apparently lied-to Mr. McClellan?
I think, three things.
• First, he’s a turncoat.
Writing a book to explain that you “weren’t as bad as everybody said you were” is a loathsome practice – but hey, everybody’s gotta make a living.
But in McClellan’s case, the primary – perhaps only – reason he got to be White House press secretary was his unflinching loyalty to his boss of nearly a decade, beginning as Texas governor, George W. Bush.
Bush knew the family – McClellan’s mother was a Texas politico – and took young Scott along with him for the presidential ride. For McClellan, now, to bite the hand that fed him all those years is, at the very least, distasteful, and, I’m certain to the Bush family, disheartening.
• Second, he doesn’t understand the media.
If McClellan protests – and I bet he will – that he meant George Bush no harm and didn’t mean for the President, himself, to be accused of lying – then the former press secretary doesn’t particularly understand the press.
Obviously, in the heat of a presidential campaign, allegations of lying in the White House will focus squarely on the man at the top. Accordingly, White House Press Secretary Dana Perino was scrambling last week to undue the damage done by her predecessor-once-removed.
“The president has not and would not ask his spokespeople to pass on false information,” she told the blood-thirsty press corps.
If McClellan truly didn’t want to embroil his friend and benefactor, George W., in this kind of imbroglio, he would either have waited till after the election to publish his book or made it clear last week that the President had nothing to do with the lie.
He did neither, choosing instead to maximize the controversy to sell the book.
Maybe he does understand the media after all.
• Third, he’s not much of a PR man.
Effective public relations people understand that all you have is your credibility, your reputation.
And if you lie to the media, you lose it. Period.
So if the people for whom you work, tell you to say something that they and you know is untrue – you refuse.
If you find out, as Scott McClellan claims he did, that they already have lied to you, then you either correct the record or you quit. That’s what Ronald Reagan Press Secretary Marlin Fitzwater threatened to do when an aide fed him misleading information about the imminent invasion of Grenada.
Scott McClellan, of course, just sat there, living the lie, and biding his time until receiving the advance to write the book.
The bet here is that no such Monday morning embarrassment will accompany the publication of the memoirs of Tony Snow, the fiercely proud and eminently capable spokesman who successfully returned respect to the office of White House Press Secretary after replacing the beleaguered Scott McClellan. |