Scott McLellan was an awful White House press secretary. As you watched him get beaten up day after day by reporters you couldn’t help but feel sorry for him. He was a Bush loyalist promoted way over his head.
When McLellan stepped down in April 2006, few expected to hear much more from him. But his new memoir has rocked Washington. In it, he criticises the Iraq war, complains that Scooter Libby and Karl Rove worked out their stories together about the Valerie Plame leak, is scathing about Condi and suggests that President Bush did take cocaine as a young man. (The Politico has the full scoop)
Many are speculating about why an apparent loyalist like McLellan has written such a harsh book. I think the answer might lie in the fact that the press secretary is, at times, an outsider in the White House—there’s a great West Wing episode about this.
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