So I just finished the audiobook by Scott McClellan, Bush 43's sometime press secretary, "What Happened: Inside the Bush White House and Washington's Culture of Deception". It was read, poorly, by McClellan himself. The Right was outraged when the book was released, and the words "Scathing criticism" and "whistleblower" were associated with the tome. But in fact, through the entire book McClellan repeats, over and over, what a great man George Bush is, and how honest, caring, compassionate, and super the President is. His hero worship borders on psychophantic.

The book is not without criticism of the administration, however, but it contains nothing - and I mean nothing - surprising to anyone who has been paying attention. The march to war was driven primarily by "George Bush's" conviction that everyone wanted to and deserved to live in freedom. The WMD argument was chosen as the lowest common denominator because the political machine of the Bush White House knew the American people wouldn't go to war solely to "spread freedom" across the Middle East. Big fucking deal, we knew that. Where's the hole card? The killer information that would cause such outrage in the Right, wailing about the disgruntled turncoat?

He refers to the "Neocons" in Bush's cabinet, and discusses the fact that Cheney and Bush had many one-on-one meetings, as did Bush and other neocons - as apparently, Bush did with many cabinet members. Not that this is in and of itself anything worthy of criticism, but McClellan has apparently never read the PNAC and doesn't understand the meaning of Iraq in the Neocon worldview. I suspect that Bush was infected with Cheney and Co's exuberance about a democratic - and America-allied - middle East that viewed the USA as liberators. He (Bush) certainly seems like the person (even in McClellan's crudely painted portrait) that would want to make sure that every idea sounded like it came from him, so there was no confusion about the Chain of Command.

The real meat of the story is that, apparently, McClellan was really, really pissed that Karl Rove and Scooter Libby put him in the position of flatly lying about the Plame fiasco and then having the bad form to get caught out later on. He felt this ruined his credibility as Press Secretary and besmirched his good name. I found myself wondering what good name he thought the mouthpiece for this administration could possibly have. So he got pissed, got canned, and wrote a book. I think, for what it's worth, he's sincere about the Permanent Campaign and the damage it can and will do to our country, but he's the wrong person to be bringing this message.

McClellan's book doesn't suck out loud - there's some interesting background information that gives you an odd, worshippers' eye view of the backside of the Great Man, but it's all about how the Culture of Washington and the Permanent Campaign led his hero down the garden path. The most scathing criticism leveled at the Bush Administration is that they brought the political Campaign machine into the machinery of governance. Bush is exactly as you might expect him to be - cocksure, casual, refusing to hear any opposing voices, requiring every person to be "on message".

But if you decide to take it on, DON'T get the audiobook. McClellan reads with no attempt to disguise the fact that he's doing so, and his diction is horrible and jarring. The former Press Secretary of the United States says "dinent" instead of "didn't", and "ay-bout" instead of "about", and... the list goes on. Before I was done I would have paid James Earl Jones from my own pocket to smack McClellan's ass and snatch the microphone from him to read it for him.