A Dana Perino memoir of her days as White House press secretary is inevitable in the wake of the Scott McClellan bombshell, especially since publishers will likely feel she has a photogenic face for the book cover and publicity tour -- this seems to be the key factor in signing up authors these days.
But why should we assume that the book will be a hyper-defensive antidote to Scotty's tell-all? Perino's problem: She has served in the White House in a period when no one has paid much attention to anything she or her boss have to say. She might be left writing a book that could be titled, Nothing Happened.
The only way -- short of a U.S. attack on Iran -- that she might salvage it is to "do a McClellan" and admit that her emperor wore no clothes.
So let's imagine a 2009 Perino bestseller in which she might write:
"Tony Snow told me the surge was working when I took over -- but it was just a Snow job. After awhile, I could no longer spew that nonsense they asked me to deliver week after week. True, I kept up the charade, yet my heart was no longer in it. But those liberal reporters are so hopeless, they couldn't even tell!"
"You remember that day when I confused the Cuban Missile Crisis with the Bay of Pigs? I was only faking that, trying to convince the liberal media that I was just a dumb blonde so they would go easy on me. And it worked!"
"The president whispered to me once, getting into Air Force One, that the only time he actually liked and respected John McCain was some time back in the late-1970s, but he was doing so much coke at the time he could not remember why he felt that way. Then he quipped, 'If you can remember the '70s you probably weren't doing enough drugs!'"
" I had a feeling that Condi Rice had become a total no-show but, frankly, no one could stand the woman, except for the president, so nobody cared if we ever saw her again. In fact, we never did see her again. But the liberal media never caught on, although David Gregory later protested that he had asked about it, once. Charlie Gibson said it wasn't his job to find out -- if it was important we would have told him!"
"Sure, they made me go out and attack Scott McClellan, but I loved what he did. Who knew the little guy had such cojones? Yes, Karl Rove said he sounded like a left-wing blogger. But I love left-wing bloggers. Really! Arianna, give me a call, girl! I am ready to blog."
"Do you think maybe I could play Valerie Plame in the movie?"
*
Greg Mitchell's new book is So Wrong for So Long: How the Press, the Pundits -- and the President -- Failed on Iraq. It features a preface by Bruce Springsteen and a foreword by Joe Galloway. He is editor of Editor & Publisher.
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Posted May 30, 2008 | 08:22 PM (EST)