The extent to which the White House has managed to keep your press corps at arm's length over the years, and the tactics by which they have achieved this--genial obfuscation, the relentless invocation of subroutine-like talking points, the refusal to comment on ongoing investigations when virtually everything the White House ever does is the subject of some sort of ongoing investigation--has been well documented and commented upon. But rarely is it asked, "Are the administration mouthpieces themselves not similarly abused?" And we're not just talking about how Tony Snow may have to step down as White House Press Secretary because they are not, apparently, paying him a living wage.
An object demonstration of how it must be a difficult way to ply one's trade came this weekend, as rumors began to swirl regarding the possible resignation of Attorney General Alberto Gonzales. Even though Gonzales had submitted his resignation on Friday, his press spokesman was none the wiser. As Editor and Publisher related:
The New York Times, which first carried the scoop, reports: "As recently as Sunday afternoon, Mr. Gonzales was denying through his press spokesman, Brian Roehrkasse, that he intended to leave. Mr. Roehrkasse said Sunday afternoon that he had telephoned Mr. Gonzales about the reports circulating in Washington that a resignation was imminent, 'and he said it wasn't true, so I don't know what more I can say.'"
White House spokesmen also insisted on Sunday that they did not believe that Mr. Gonzales was planning to resign.
Our friends at Wonkette reacted thusly: "That's his own spokesman he lied to. For no discernible reason at all." And they're probably right--though as far as "discernible reasons" go, we've come to learn that Gonzo draws his strength from not being able to recall when any key moment in his life happened. He's like Rumplestiltzkin in that regard--if you succeed in reminding him where or when something happened, suddenly he's got to spin golden tea cozies for everyone on the Senate Judiciary Committee.
Gonzo's treatment of his own mouthpiece, of course, has an obvious parallel to the late and largely unlamented career of former White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan, whose strategic deployment often seemed to run in direct proportion for just how far out of his depth he was. Previously, on the Huffington Post, Ankush Khardori made trenchant note of McClellan's situation, ("...to fully understand McClellan, you had to understand that this was a man who was fundamentally and consistently out of the loop") especially when it came to how badly his bosses let him dangle in the wind where l'affaire Plame was concerned:
In late 2003, McClellan repeatedly told the press corps that Rove and Libby had informed him that they had nothing to do with the leaking of Plame's identity. We now know the implications of those statements were flatly and embarrassingly wrong, but as Newsweek points out, McClellan "gave himself enough wiggle room to suggest later they had lied to him." Mike McCurry, one of President Clinton's press secretaries, believes that this is actually what occurred; he observed on NPR that once the true extent of Rove and Libby's involvement came to light, "You could tell from body language -- by the quotient of squirming -- that [McClellan] felt very uncomfortable, that he had not been given reliable information by people he worked with." McCurry knows a thing or two about being sent out to the press with unreliable information, and if McClellan had even a modicum of self-respect, he, not unlike McCurry, would have left after it became clear that his colleagues had lied to him.
Of course, the good news for Mr. Roehrkasse, is that he won't have to spend any time debating whether he should continue to work for Gonzales. And, perhaps now, he'll be able to empathize with the American people a bit more deeply, for like him, we have, for some time now, been like mushrooms: kept in the dark, and fed mostly B.S.