Truthfulness or dishonesty ? - McClellan’s book on Bush
Posted May 31, 2008 by Paul SiegelCategories: politics
Tags: Bush, Lies, McCellan, politics
This is the main heading of USA today’s paper edition on the day after the news of the McClellan’s book got published. The people who were watching the events of last 7 years of reign of our emperor BUSH knows what is truth is, though they would have pleasantly surprised to see white house press secretary coming out accusing the president. I was surprised to see this heading and wondered how deep the mainstream media goes to defend their decider commander in Chief. It is a surprise to see person like white house chief spokesmen coming out with this type of book instead of joining the lucrative revolving door positions at psychopathic war mongering Multi national companies and then coming out openly accusing his own boss, who can’t tolerate the word ‘No’. I was wondering about word ‘Dishonesty’.
According to the Dictionary ‘ Dishonest’ means
| 1. | not honest; disposed to lie, cheat, or steal; not worthy of trust or belief: a dishonest person. |
| 2. | proceeding from or exhibiting lack of honesty; fraudulent: a dishonest advertisement. |
Who has lied to public over WMD ,Terrorism, torture on a daily basis, cheated the public to forcing them to WAR in Iraq and now shamelessly trying for excuse for Iran War , stolen trillions of dollars for their neo-con companies from the public health, educational funds. Who has been proven to be dishonest to the people over last 8 years consistently. Then why do the USA Today consider it as a dishonest?. The only explanation one can see is these mouth peices of the elite can’t see public or public interest . they only see the objects to be exploited.
Even if we consider Mcclellan has lied what about his experience, the thousands and thousand proofs that were shown that Bush is lier, who sprinkle his 10 minute speeches with emotional words like WMD ( proved to be non exist ), Terrorism ( only he can decide who is terrorist or not from 6 billion populations ), uses word security for every thing, where as the only security he could provide is to his conservative multi nationals over the millions of corps of iraqi’s and afhghans and deteriarating american living standards will prove the same .
Like a perfect psychopath , who can only see himself and world revolves around him for him self , for him nothing them nothing exist. Just like other damage control, it always with one elite paper coining a word, allow it to settle it for couple of days and market to the public over and over. so we are going to hear the word ‘Dishonesty’ over and over to a point whose definition will be changed to ‘Not good for the boss’ is dishonesty. Probably this will be another word Bush’s English Dictionary of distortions
Look at this AP Article on the same topic
McClellan details culture of secrecy in Bush White House
The Bush White House is known for secrecy and strict message control, and a new book by its former press secretary details extraordinary measures it has used to manage what information gets out.
Keeping the chief spokesman — and thus the news media and the public — out of the loop at times is not unheard of, but President Bush has taken it to new lengths, Scott McClellan writes in his insider account.
If the chief spokesman is not in the loop of events , what does he briefing to the white house press and to the public in general ?. LIES or he is good at Reflective Story telling for the journalists questions.
Bush told McClellan’s predecessor, Ari Fleischer, that he would purposely not tell him things at times. Then-national security adviser Condoleezza Rice cut off Fleischer’s authority to read notes on Bush’s phone conversations with fellow world leaders. This attitude filtered to other top advisers, who resisted filling in the press secretary, McClellan said.
“No one charged with keeping the press and the public informed about the workings of the government should have to play such frustrating games,” McClellan writes.
White House press secretary Dana Perino says it was his own fault if McClellan was an outsider. “You can be as in or out of the loop as you choose to be,” she said.
If the president is responsible for every body in his administration and to the public , what is he doing, hiding things
Current and former White House aides, unaccustomed to someone from their famously tight circle spilling the goods, have reacted to McClellan’s explosive — and immediately best-selling — book by trying to discredit their old friend. In the kind of seemingly coordinated lockstep familiar to reporters who have long covered the Bush White House, they have suggested in similar language that he is betraying his former boss for money or rewriting history to vindicate old grudges.
More money is in the revolving doors of War mongering multi nationals than in the books , which can only create trouble to him from govt.
They also say that McClellan wasn’t in the know, implying that his account now can’t be trusted.
But this line of criticism serves to support the central accusation of McClellan’s book: that Bush and, on his order, his aides value secrecy over transparency — to the detriment of both his presidency and the public.
“The Bush administration lacked real accountability in large part because Bush himself did not embrace openness or government in the sunshine,” McClellan writes in “What Happened: Inside the Bush White House and Washington’s Culture of Deception.”
The ultimate loyalist who worked for Bush as Texas governor, jumped to his presidential campaign and then followed him to Washington when he won, McClellan came to be known as a presidential spokesman who perfected the art of the anti-flair.
Over nearly three years, he was super-cautious in televised briefings, blandly repeating talking points until questioners tired. Behind the scenes, he was a journeyman spokesman, diligently tracking down details and keeping up good relations with the press corps. But he never revealed cracks in the message machine.
isn’t it a wonderful Job McClellan did, the president had enjoyed at that time. Now the same job became honesty. because the truth came out
McClellan says his views about that machine, and his role in it, have changed in the two years since he left. He writes critically about what he said is Bush’s distrust of and dislike for the national media and laments a culture of secrecy that left “a large black hole in my understanding of what was really going on inside the administration.”
Looking back to when he met with Bush in 1999 before being hired as a senior spokesman in his gubernatorial office, McClellan recalled the governor’s expectations, most concerning tight discipline over information. Bush told McClellan he valued “the importance of staying on message” and public statements that “were coordinated internally so that everyone is always on the same page and there are few surprises.”
Four years later, McClellan was asked to take on the far bigger job of White House press secretary and writes that he had reservations. Knowing Bush’s preferences, he wondered whether he would be “privy to the real rationales behind every important administration decision” or “simply be presented with the final product and told to sell it.”
McClellan was promised all the access he needed to the president and presidential events. But “it was clear,” he writes, that the president’s definition of necessary would “keep the press secretary on a pretty short leash.” This included being barred from key internal decision-making discussions, National Security Council sessions and even the daily communications meeting attended by the president, vice president, chief of staff, political adviser, national security adviser and counselor.
Stephen Hess, who served in the Eisenhower and Nixon administrations and wrote the press secretary section in the Encyclopedia of the American Presidency, said “it’s like the kids game of telephone” and doesn’t serve the public well.
“The more filtered information is, the less accurate it’s likely to be,” said Hess, a presidential scholar at the Brookings Institution.
But while the Bush White House is “one of the most closed-up” in history, he said all press secretaries struggle for information.
Marlin Fitzwater, for instance, who was press secretary during the Reagan and first Bush presidencies, has complained that some officials acted as if he could not be trusted and that he felt at times like a reporter seeking information people didn’t want him to have.
Press secretary Mike McCurry said he lost his access to Bill Clinton’s inner circle after allegations that the president had sex with a former White House intern and tried to cover it up. McCurry found himself shunted aside by Clinton’s lawyers as White House aides were slapped with subpoenas to testify in a grand jury investigation.
There have been 29 modern-day press secretaries and only a few, such as Jody Powell under President Carter and James Hagerty for Eisenhower, had truly extensive access, according to Hess.
“The more typical press secretary spends a good deal of his or her time trying to find out what’s going on,” he said. “They’re up against a lot of people who are busy and who don’t really trust the press. … You’ve got to be pretty insistent.”
Ed Gillespie, as White House counselor one of Bush’s closest advisers, said Perino is exactly that — and allowed to be by the Bush White House. She is “at the table on everything that’s done here,” Gillespie said. That means Oval Office access as well as participation in top-level meetings to debate and make decisions about policy, planning, legislative strategy and other matters, he said.
“I don’t want for attendance or invitations,” Perino said. “And on the rare occasions I have not been `on a list,’ I’ve been able to appeal.”
