Politics | 05/29/2008 2:57 pm

Monica Crowley to Scott McClellan: 'Not Cool' to Kiss 'n' Tell With Bush Still in Office

Editor’s Note: Monica Crowley, Ph.D., is a panelist on The McLaughlin Group, the host of the nationally syndicated radio program, "The Monica Crowley Show," and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.

It used to be, back in the day, that those who served their country in high positions — positions of authority and importance — would honor their offices and the office they ultimately served: the presidency. Even when they may have acted dishonorably in office, they kept the dirty linens to themselves. That’s what was expected of them, and that’s what they did.

They didn’t write kiss ‘n’ tells. They didn’t spill the beans. They didn’t tell tales out of school.

They kept their counsel, and went to their graves with the stories that gentlemen simply did not tell.

Good-bye to all that.

The unspoken rule of political memoirs once was: you can write what you’d like, and you can express disagreements and even once-confidential conversations (provided enough time had elapsed so as not to imperil national security secrets or anyone’s reputation), but you must only do it once the presidency in which you had served had ended. There was to be no memoir writing while the president for whom you had worked was still in office.

George Stephanopoulos was the first high-ranking White House official to publish a tell-all while his president was still in office. All Too Human was a scathing look inside the highly dysfunctional Clinton White House, published nine months before Bill and Hillary backed up the moving van and made off with the White House furniture.

Was it salacious? Yup. Was it delightful? You bet. Was it proper? Not really.

Now a new memoir is hitting the bookshelves, written by former Bush press secretary Scott McClellan. In it, he blasts the president for relying on "propaganda" to sell the Iraq war, which he now deems "unnecessary." He attacks the vice president and Secretary Condi Rice for incompetence and arrogance, and goes after the president for being stubbornly attached to certain positions.

Some of these criticisms may have merit. The events we are in the midst of now will one day be history, and the history of the administration will be looked at from many angles and with many sets of eyes.

But for someone who was once the president’s confidante, someone he knew and trusted, someone who gave him the opportunity of a lifetime, to write a tell-all while that history is still being made is not cool. There will be plenty of memoirs coming out of the Bush administration. Most will be cover-your-tushy affairs, as memoirs often are. Some will paint a glossy picture. Some will be critical. But their timing is crucial.

McClellan could have published this book in eight months, when Bush was on his way out the door. But then, he wouldn’t have sold as many books. Publishing now may make him a bit wealthier, but it’s simply not cool to do to your former boss and your president. Not cool at all.

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I always admired Colin Powell and his wife. But the fact is that he and Rice KNEW that Iraq was no danger and they are on tape before the fact saying so: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v0wbpKCdkkQ Dr. Paul Craig Roberts Paul Craig Roberts is an economist and a nationally syndicated columnist. He served as an Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan Administration and continues, was an editor and columnist for the Wall Street Journal, Business Week. Ph.D. from the University of Virginia, post-graduate at the University of California, Berkeley, and Oxford University. In print, he has labeled Condi Rice a moron. He has called for President Bush’s impeachment, labeled Bush criminally insane, called for him to be turned over to the courts in the Hague. “Impeach Bush Now by Paul Craig Roberts The Bush administration has failed catastrophically. Bush has compounded a natural disaster and turned it into the greatest calamity in American history. The US has lost its largest and most strategic port, thousands of lives, and 80% of one of America’s most historic cities is under water. “Prior to 911, the Federal Emergency Management Agency warned that New Orleans was a disaster waiting to happen. Congress authorized the Southeast Louisiana Urban Flood Control Project (SELA) in order to protect the strategic port, the refineries, and the large population. However, after 2003 the flow of funds to SELA were diverted to the war in Iraq. During 2004 and 2005 the New Orleans Times-Picayune published nine articles citing New Orleans’ loss of hurricane protection to the war in Iraq. Every expert and newspapers as distant as Texas saw the New Orleans catastrophe coming. But President Bush and his insane government preferred war in Iraq to protecting Americans at home. Bush’s war left the Corps of Engineers only 20% of the funding to protect New Orleans from flooding from Lake Pontchartrain. On June 18, 2004, the Corps’ project manager, Al Naomi, told the Times-Picayune: “the levees are sinking. If we don’t get the money to raise them, we can’t stay ahead of the settlement.” Despite the dire warnings delivered by the 2004 hurricane season, the Bush administration made deep budget cuts for flood control and hurricane funding for New Orleans. The US Senate, alarmed at the Bush administration’s insanity, was planning to restore the funding for 2006. But now it is too late. Many multiples of the funding that would have saved the city now have to be spent to rescue it. Not content with leaving New Orleans unprotected, it took the Bush administration five days to get the remnants of the National Guard not serving in Iraq, along with desperately needed food and water, to devastated New Orleans. This is the slowest emergency response by the US government in modern times. By the time the Bush administration could organize any resources for New Orleans, many more people had died and the city was in total chaos. Despite the most dismal performance on record, Bush’s Homeland Security Secretary, Michael Chertoff, said on Thursday that the Bush administration has done a “magnificent job.” The on-the-scene mayor of New Orleans sees it differently: “They’re feeding the people a line of bull, and they are spinning and people are dying.” It is a major deal, one that will affect Americans far beyond New Orleans. 25% of our oil and gasoline comes through the New Orleans port and refineries, all out of commission. Needed goods cannot be imported, and exports will plummet, worsening an already disastrous deficit in the balance of trade. The increased cost of gasoline will soak up consumers’ disposable incomes, with dire effects on consumer spending. US economic growth will be siphoned off into higher energy costs. American lives far from New Orleans will be adversely affected. The destruction of New Orleans is the responsibility of the most incompetent government in American history and perhaps in all history. Americans are rapidly learning that they were deceived by the superpower hubris. The powerful US military cannot successfully occupy Baghdad or control the road to the airport – and this against an insurgency based in only 20% of the Iraqi population. Bush’s pointless war has left Washington so pressed for money that the federal government abandoned New Orleans to catastrophe. The Bush administration is damned by its gross incompetence. Bush has squandered the lives and health of thousands of people. He has run through hundreds of billions of borrowed dollars. He has lost America’s reputation and its allies. With barbaric torture and destruction of our civil liberty, he has stripped America of its inherent goodness and morality. And now Bush has lost America’s largest port and 25 percent of its oil supply. Why? Because Bush started a gratuitous war egged on by a claque of crazy neoconservatives who have sacrificed America’s interests to their insane agenda. The neoconservatives have brought these disasters to all Americans, Democrat and Republican alike. Now they must he held accountable. Bush and his neoconservatives are guilty of criminal negligence and must be prosecuted. What will it take for Americans to reestablish accountability in their government? Bush has got away with lies and an illegal war of aggression, with outing CIA agents, with war crimes against Iraqi civilians, with the horrors of the Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo torture centers, and now with the destruction of New Orleans.” Paul Craig Roberts IS a real man of honor. He got out and spoke out and tried to warn the US public…but the paid talking Fox Heads ie propaganda arm of Bush Inc come out and blast in concert to shut people up. ___________________________________ Here’s what Dr. Robert Bowman said. He was in Reagan and Carter’s administration in charge of Star Wars etc, was a Col. in the USAF and was Director of Advanced Space Programs Development under President Jimmy Carter. He is Presiding Archbishop, Catholic Church. He has been president of the Institute for Space and Security Studies since 1982. Before that he was vice-president of Space Communications Company; manager, Advanced Space Programs for General Dynamics; and director, Advanced Space Programs Development for the Department of Defense, directing the “Star Wars” programs. “I joined the Air Force to protect our borders and our people, not the financial interests of Exxon” “Our freedoms are not under attack from Saddam Hussein. Our freedoms are under attack by John Ashcroft….John Poindexter….Donald Rumsfeld… Dick Cheney….George W. Bush. “As a pilot who flew 101 combat missions in Vietnam, I can tell you that the best thing our government can do for its combat veterans is to quit making more of them. Peace is patriotic; a preemptive war is immoral, illegal, unconstitutional, a war crime, and TREASON. “This war has nothing to do with national security or freedom or democracy or human rights or protecting our allies or weapons of mass destruction or defeating terrorism or disarming Iraq. It has to do with money. It has to do with oil. And it has to do with raw imperial power. It is based on a pack of lies. And it is wrong. Those who forced this war on an unwilling world are guilty of flagrantly violating the US Constitution, the UN Charter, and international law. What they have done is illegal, immoral, unconstitutional and TREASON. “It’s been said that somewhere in Texas there is a village looking for their idiot. Now that may be funny, but it misses the point. George W. Bush is not an imbecile. He is a TRAITOR. “Before this war started, we knew it would fracture NATO, split the United Nations, separate us from our allies, and destroy the great nation we inherited from our fathers who died in World War II. And it has. We knew it would make our beloved country feared and hated, an outcast from the world community, a pariah among the peoples, and the number one rogue nation on earth. And it has. It has done so based on a pack of lies…that is not stupidity. That is TREASON. “We knew this sadistic corporate war would incense the Arab world, provide thousands of new Osama bin Ladens, and enormously increase the terrorist threat. And it has. We knew it would further endanger the American people and destroy our national security. And it has. That is not stupidity, it is TREASON. “The cabal of neoconservatives at PNAC who planned this war (Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Libby, Perle, Jeb Bush) even before W became president, knew the American people would not stand for it unless there was a new Pearl Harbor. 9/11 supplied that. Our government was warned. They were warned by the Clinton Administration. They were warned by 11 other countries. And they were specifically warned by an FBI agent that one of them was planning on flying a hijacked airliner into the World Trade Center. “They not only ignored the warnings, they made sure no fighter jets were scrambled to stop it. If they had just done nothing, and allowed normal procedures to be followed, the Twin Towers would still be standing and thousands of dead Americans would still be alive. This is not stupidity, it is TREASON. “As a combat veteran, I will not stand idly by and watch our security destroyed by a president who went AWOL rather than fight in Vietnam. Honor requires that I call this by its right name. It is TREASON. “As one who has devoted his life to the security of this country, I will not stand by and watch an appointed president send our sons and daughters around the world to kill Arabs for the oil companies without calling it by its right name. It is TREASON. “I joined the Air Force to protect our borders and our people, not the financial interests of Exxon. We’ve had enough corporate wars. No more Iraqs. No more El Salvadors. No more Kosovos. No more Colombias. These are not isolated incidents of stupidity. They are part of a long, bloody history of foreign policy being conducted for the financial benefit of the wealthy few. It is a new colonialism. It violates our Constitution. It endangers our people. And it is TREASON. “Peace is patriotic; a preemptive war is immoral, illegal, unconstitutional, a war crime, and TREASON. I swore to uphold the Constitution of the United States against all enemies foreign and domestic. That includes a renegade president. Wake up, America! It is time for George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, and the whole oil mafia to be removed from office and indicted for TREASON. We are the people. We are sovereign. We are the patriots. The whole world is with us. Never allow anyone to intimidate you into silence. Wake up, America! It’s time to speak truth to power. God bless America, and God save us from the traitors in our government.” ————————- It isn’t that there weren’t plenty of decent people speaking it out…it was as Dan Rather said you had the equivalent of a burning rubber tire put around your neck…..and by the Fox News people who got their script straight from the Bush Admin. There’s NOTHING “uncool” about speaking out….it is the paid-off talking heads and the ignorant and apathetic masses who are complicit. The Bush cabal should have been impeached long ago.

By Everyone--into the Rose Garden on 05/30/2008 6:24 am

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pink rose, a friend and neighbor of mine happens to be a niece of eddie slovik, the american soldier who was executed for desertion. you say: ““As a combat veteran, I will not stand idly by and watch our security destroyed by a president who went AWOL rather than fight in Vietnam. Honor requires that I call this by its right name. It is TREASON.” my friend wonders why george w. bush was not executed for desertion. admittedly, this has nothing to do with scott mcclellan or his book. but it is murder most foul.

By mary lou s on 05/30/2008 3:02 pm

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Mary Lou—It wasn’t my statement but as I noted all quoted from former Air Force Col. Robert Bowman who flew over 100 sorties in Vietnam. He was in the Carter and Reagan administrations and in the Dept of Defense headed up the Star Wars program. He’s a Catholic Priest, has a doctorate and has tirelessly spoken around the country since 2003 trying to get Bush impeached. Why he hasn’t been successful is because of ‘media personalities’ like Monica Crowley who don’t recognize their job is to report NEWS and not to be a mouthpiece/defender for any administration particularly one of mass murdering war criminals. I can just see Edward R. Murrow, Walter Cronkite, Huntley or Brinkley, Charles Collingswood, Robert McNeil,etc——when presented with the insider information in this book about the decision to trick the US public and Congress into the worst debacle in our history—-racing to metaphorically ‘shoot’ the messenger instead of DO THEIR JOBS and start some serious investigative work (or support it) as Woodward & Bernstein did to break the Watergate story. But that was when the Washington Post was a legitimate paper, with an legitimate editor and actual investigative journalists and not someone who castigates just one of many Bush Inc flunkey’s who’ve talked. Great priorities….and so articulate too, ie “uncool.” Murder most foul…you are right. The Bush Administration stinks to the outermost reaches of the Milky Way. It’s all quite sickening.

By Everyone--into the Rose Garden on 05/30/2008 7:54 pm

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Tell you what isn’t cool. Sending the Secretary of State off to the United Nations on a fool’s errand that cost him his reputation. And deploying thousands of our men and women to Iraq to risk, and in the case of more than four thousand, LOSE their lives in a war manufactured by a greedy White House administration. And to run up a national debt to the tune of $9,393,181, 591, 602. 70. That’s not cool. Oh, and it’s very un-cool to lie. My question is why did Scott McClellan wait so long to write this book? I could tell the words were bitter in his mouth during his last few news conferences.

By Maurine H on 05/29/2008 4:22 pm

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Oh, I think he timed it to impact the election, and that’s also his right. The electorate tends to have the attention span of a drunken gnat, so I think he waited until he could do the most “good.”

By Mugsy Peabody on 05/29/2008 4:27 pm

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“Drunken gnat” I love that!

By Margo Porter on 05/29/2008 4:45 pm

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Thereby shooting himself in his own little Republican foot????

By Maurine H on 05/29/2008 5:40 pm

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He’s said he’s leaning towards Obama

By Everyone--into the Rose Garden on 05/30/2008 6:39 am

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If you mean during last night’s interview with Keith Olbermann, he said he hadn’t made up his mind yet.

By Maurine H on 05/30/2008 3:02 pm

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I saw the KO piece and many others and don’t remember which I saw on Huffington Post (today there’s a vid of her saying the rec $7M in venture capital for that website wc has been around for a few years but hasn’t made a profit yet, although both the VC guy and AH say they are confident it will—me too excellent site) she said she isn’t about the money but “improving the quality of the national conversation.” If she ever runs for office I’m voting for her. Anyway saw McCelllan on one clip saying he is leaning to Obama…but as you said, hasn’t yet decided. On Huffington today said the admin tried to stop his book and now say they will block his testifying.

By Everyone--into the Rose Garden on 05/30/2008 8:02 pm

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Rupert Murdock also said he is for Obama—paraphrasing, “Very intelligent, rock star, like his plans for education—education in this country is an abomination [Huh? Mr. Man whose middle name is disinformation. Gee.] 80% of people are sick to death of politicians, hurting badly economically and want change. Every one on Hillary’s team is telling her to get out except her husband—she is the past—Obama is the future. He’ll win. I like McCain-he’s a friend-but he has a lot of problems.” When asked if he was responsible for the NY Post endorsing Obama “Yeah.” He said he hopes Obama is as good as his promise and that he wants to meet him. Of course he says all this very genially—with no sense of irony of his enormous weight in the mess we’re in. ie supporting GWB in invading Iraq with this insane sentence. “The world will be awash in cheap oil.” Amazing how can be that rich and myopic enough on so many levels to make that statement. http://link.brightcove.com/services/link/bcpid452319854/bctid1579802959

By Everyone--into the Rose Garden on 06/01/2008 12:39 pm

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Mugsy, that is too funny. You have a wonderful way of adding humor to the tough subjects. I agree with your take on the timing, too.

By T S on 05/29/2008 10:33 pm

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I agree with all your comments tonight Mugsy…..saves me having to make any further comments except…..Any damage that can be done to George Bush and his ilk the better I like it..

By Dona Howlett on 05/30/2008 12:04 am

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Scott McClellan should probably be arrested for accessory before, during and after the fact. I’ve not read the book, and perhaps I am speaking out of turn, but Mr. McClellan, I would think, had a moral imperative to reveal this information much earlier. I’m not nearly as interested in the president’s operatives being “cool” as I am in their being forthcoming. Now, we’ll just have to wait to hear from Oprah to decide how we’re supposed to feel about this memoir. Peace and grace

By beth willis on 05/29/2008 4:39 pm

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Ms Crowley should rethink her opinion. While Scott McClellan cannot be considered a hero for revealing what so many people already knew, he has spoken up about what he believes he knows. If this were about anything other that the thousands of senseless deaths that have occurred then maybe (small maybe) discretion would be virtuous. But we have a president who was as witless and short sighted as some of us suspected. A man who has indirectly ended our way of life by making us wounded, fearful, and poorer in many ways that we could not have imagined. We have to remember that not only are there dead soldiers but dead civilians as well. We must remember that there are children in Iraq who have no understanding of this war yet have become its casualties. There are those here in the U.S. who have attempted suicide to avoid redeployment. The atrocities at the Walter Reed hospital and at Guantanamo Bay. In view of these war related issues does Ms. Crowley beleive that Scott McClellan should keep quiet out of employee loyalty? Really?

By Margo Porter on 05/29/2008 4:41 pm