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Executive Times |
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2008 Book Reviews |
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What
Happened: Inside the Bush White House and Washington's Culture of Deception
by Scott McClellan |
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Rating: |
*** |
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(Recommended) |
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Click
on title or picture to buy from amazon.com |
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Misled Former
White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan tells his story about D.C. life
in his new book, What
Happened: Inside the Bush White House and Washington's Culture of Deception.
McClellan explains that his was misled by five people when his unknowingly
passed along false information to the press about the leaking of information
by Karl Rove and Scooter Libby about Valerie Plame. The five were: President
Bush, Vice President Cheney, chief of staff Andrew Card, Rove and Libby.
Readers looking for a tell-all and finger-pointing won’t find it here.
McClellan blames himself for being misled. Here’s an excerpt, from the end of
Chapter 8, “Selling the War,” pp. 144-147: When Bush was making up his
mind to pursue regime change in Iraq, it is clear that his national security
team did little to slow him down, to help him fully understand the tinderbox
he was opening and the potential risks in doing so. I know the president
pretty well. I believe that, if he had been given a crystal ball in which he
could have foreseen the costs of war—more than 4,000 American troops killed,
30,000 injured, and tens of thousands of innocent Iraqi citizens dead—he
would have never made the decision to invade, despite what he might say or
feel he has to say publicly today. And though no one has a crystal
ball, it's not asking too much that a well-considered understanding of the
circumstances and history of Iraq and the Middle East should have been
brought into the decision-making process. The responsibility to provide this
understanding belonged to the president's advisers, and they failed to
fulfill it. Secretary of State Colin Powell was apparently the only adviser
who even tried to raise doubts about the wisdom of war. The rest of the
foreign policy team seemed to be preoccupied with regime change or, in the
case of Condi Rice, seemingly more interested in accommodating the
president's instincts and ideas than in questioning them or educating him. An
even more fundamental problem was the way his advisers decided to pursue a
political propaganda campaign to sell the war to the American people. It was
all part of the way the White House operated and Washington functioned, and
no one seemed to see any problem with using such an approach on an issue as
grave as war. A pro-war campaign might have been I
more acceptable
had it been accompanied by a high level of candor and honesty but it was as
not. Most of the arguments used—especially those stated in prepared remarks
by the president and in forums like Powell's presentation at the UN Security
Council in February 2003—were carefully vetted and capable of being
substantiated. But as the campaign accelerated, caveats and qualifications
were downplayed or dropped altogether. Contradictory intelligence was largely
ignored or simply disregarded. Evidence based on high confidence from the
intelligence community was lumped together with intelligence of lesser
confidence. A nuclear threat was added to the biological and chemical threats
to create a greater sense of gravity and urgency. Support for terrorism was
given greater weight by playing up a dubious al Qaeda connection to Iraq. When
it was all packaged together, the case constituted a "grave and
gathering danger" that needed to be dealt with urgently. Some of Bush's advisers
believed that, given Saddam Hussein's history, it was only prudent to suspect
the worst. And some, like Cheney, Rumsfeld, and Wolfowitz, were evidently
pursuing their own agendas. The most significant of these
personal agendas was probably Cheney's, given his closeness to the president
and his influence over him. It is also the agenda that is most likely to remain
unknown, because of Cheney's personality and his penchant for secrecy. He may
have been driven by a desire to finish the job he started as defense
secretary in 1991, when the United States defeated Saddam Hussein and pushed
his troops out of Kuwait but stopped short of advancing to Baghdad to end
his rule. Cheney was also heavily involved in economic and energy policy. He
might well have viewed the removal of Saddam Hussein as an opportunity to
give America more influence over Iraq's oil reserves, thereby benefiting our
national and economic security. In any case, it's obviously a
problem when forceful personalities like Cheney, Rumsfeld, and Wolfowitz
pursue their individual interests and push them on the president. As the
president's top foreign policy adviser, National Security Adviser Condi Rice
should have stood up to those more experienced, strong-viewed advisers rather
than deferring to them. However, my later experiences with Condi led me to
believe she was more interested in figuring out where the president stood and
just carrying out his wishes while expending only cursory effort on helping
him understand all the considerations and potential consequences. It
goes to an important question that critics have raised about the president.
Is Bush intellectually incurious or, as some assert, actually stupid? The
latter accusation seems to me a sad reflection on today's political climate,
where name-calling and emotional rhetoric get more attention than reasoned
and civil discourse. Bush is plenty smart enough to be president. But as I've
noted, his leadership style is based more on instinct than deep intellectual
debate. His intellectual curiosity tends to be centered on knowing what he
needs in order to effectively articulate, advocate, and defend his policies.
Bush keenly recognizes the role of marketing and selling policy in today's
governance, so such an approach is understandable to some degree. But his
advisers needed to recognize how potentially harmful his instinctual
leadership and limited intellectual curiosity can be when it comes to crucial
decisions, and in light of today's situation, it has become reasonable to
question his judgment. The fact that he has been portrayed as not bright is
unfortunate, but it's a result of his own mistakes—which could have been
prevented had his beliefs been properly vetted and challenged by his top
advisers. Bush's top advisers, especially those on his national security
team, allowed the president to be put in the position he is in today. His
credibility has been shattered and his public standing seemingly irreparably
damaged. The permanent campaign
mentality bears some of the blame. Throughout the campaign, building public
support by making the strongest possible case for war was the top priority,
regardless of whether or not it was the most intellectually honest approach
to the issue of war and peace. Message discipline sometimes meant avoiding
forthrightness—for example, evasively dismissing questions about the risks
of war as "speculation;” since the decision to go to war supposedly had
not yet been made. In Washington's hyperpartisan atmosphere, candor was
viewed as too risky; critics could easily twist and manipulate words to
their advantage, undermining the well-planned strategy. In the end, of course,
President Bush bears ultimate responsibility for the invasion of Iraq. He
made the decision to invade, and he signed off on a strategy for selling the
war that was less than candid and honest. An issue as grave as war must be
dealt with openly, forthrightly, and honestly. The American people, and
especially our troops and their families, deserve nothing less. The controversy over how Bush
took the nation to war was soon to explode. A permanent state of suspicion
and partisan warfare would start to take hold. An enormous effort had been
put into selling the war and the detailed planning for toppling the regime
of Saddam Hussein. But the same kind of energy and resources were not
invested in planning for the postregime occupation period. The insufficient
planning and preparation would only become visible in the aftermath as an
insurgency took hold, terrorists seized the opportunity to inflict terrible
harm, American military casualties rose, and the Iraqi people suffered a
seemingly endless cycle of violence. The
war would become an increasingly challenging problem for the ad-
ministration. Having created an atmosphere of suspicion and partisan war-
fare, the White House would be unable to call on bipartisan support when it
was needed most—for the sake of the war and our troops who were called to carry
it out. Questions of deliberate deception about the case for war would hover
over it all. And the truth would be caught in the political crossfire. But as we entered May 2003,
with the initial phase of the war having been conducted successfully and the
president standing tall with the American public, from inside the bubble I
was unable to foresee the coming political wars. Nor did I realize that I was
about to be offered the experience of a lifetime that would place me on the
front lines of the coming battles. Many
readers will finish reading What
Happened and conclude that McClellan was naďve and was easily taken
advantage of by people far more cunning than he. Others will take him to task
for seeming to say one thing and then it’s opposite. Some will conclude that
they don’t learn much more about what happened. What I found interesting was
the exploration of the consequences of polarization and the endless campaign
and how life in Washington has changed in ways that inhibit getting work done
that will benefit Americans. Steve
Hopkins, September 20, 2008 |
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The recommendation rating for
this book appeared in the October 2008 issue of Executive Times URL for this review: http://www.hopkinsandcompany.com/Books/What Happened.htm For Reprint Permission,
Contact: Hopkins & Company, LLC • E-mail: books@hopkinsandcompany.com |
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