McClellan resigns
He always seemed like a deer in the headlights. Maybe the next one will be more entertaining.
Update: NYT says "Also, Karl Rove will no longer direct policy development, an official said."
Update: NYT says "Also, Karl Rove will no longer direct policy development, an official said."
posted by $!# at 4/19/2006 09:55:00 AM
5 Comments:
Bush said of McClellan praising his performance: "One of these days, he and I are going to be rocking in chairs in Texas and talking about the good old days." What good old days? Slaughter in the Middle East. Torture in Gitmo. Huge budget deficits. Harrassment, intimidation and spying on US citizens. Environmental abuse. Exploding size of useless government agencies (Katrina etc). You let McClellan off easy, blogautomatique, he's been complicit in all this. No innocent deer, that one.
I look at him sweating and blinking under the tv lights, falling back on the same un-artful dodges over and over and think 'pawn' rather than 'player'. Is he fooling me?
Compare him to Fleischer. I got the sense that Ari had more input into shaping the message that went out. I'm making superficial judgements, of course, but I don't have anything else to go on.
And don't get me wrong, McClellan is complicit beyond a doubt, but other names come to mind when I think of who is really responsible for that list of crimes you've ticked off.
I see what you mean, and I don't want to get into grades of guilt, but I do think the press secretary is a powerful position--he's in there tight.
Let's grade them on entertainment value instead. Bush and McClellan: C-; Rummy gets a B+/A-; Ashcroft was a B+ for being a nutcase.
The Press Secretary doesn't shape policy; he provides non-answers to the White House press corps. McClellan in this regard is no different than many previous press secretaries. His job is obfuscation, misdirection, outright lies.
The system, to the extent it can be called that, would work better if the press corps had called McClellan or Fleisher to task on any number of contradictions or prevarications. But with a few exceptions, the White House press corps has been listless since 2001 (except maybe for the excitable Jeff Gannon).
If we're apportioning blame, they get a far bigger share than cannon-fodder McClellan.
(Although, for the record, I'd wager the deer-in-the-headlights look was an act.)
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