Scott McClellan And The Opacity Agenda

"I have given it my all, sir, and I've given you my all," Scott McClellan said to President Bush on the day his resignation was announced. These words have a strange poignancy today. McClellan surrendered everything to Bush, becoming what Michael Wolff called a "kick-me archetype," a man "whose reason for being is, apparently, to shoulder public ridicule and pain."

One of Bush's strengths is his eye for human weakness. The towel-snapping humor is based on this. It was that eye that spotted in McClellan a White House spokesman who could be pushed further into propaganda use than prior press secretaries would have tolerated. In order to get someone that pliable, you have to give up a lot in experience, talent, charm, agility, depth. But for various reasons--which I will explain--Bush and Cheney saw these defects as an advantage. They actually wanted the executive branch to become more opaque, and he was the perfect man for that.

The record shows he took the blows and did it Bush's way, until it came time to write his book, What Happened, which has caused quite the stir in Washington even though, as one journalist after another has pointed out, there's nothing new in it by way of revelations.

McClellan's tale (in my paraphrase)...

I was stupid, I allowed myself to be fooled by them. I was misled. I was misguided by the people who were supposed to guide me so I don't die out there. I trusted the wrong people, but they were the top people. I see now that I was the public speaking part of a propaganda mission. The people running it let me lie for them. They destroyed their own press secretary when they did that. And the American people rejected us because we didn't level with them. I know, because I was the one not leveling....

And just below the surface of the words. A dream I had about public service died inside when I lied for you from the White House podium. I blame myself for not seeing that. And now I turn to your part in those events.

A propaganda presidency

I have a blogging stake interest in this story because a big picture piece I wrote about him two years ago has long been on the first page of Google results when you type in "Scott McClellan." It was published at my blog, PressThink, in April 2006 when McClellan quit as White House spokesman. See The Jerk at the Podium: Scott McClellan Steps Away. Most of what I have to say on last week's events is in that earlier post.

McClellan, I think, saw that he became just that: the jerk, the kick-me guy whom everyone could abuse. He is now trying to explain, in public, how such a thing happened to a young man from a politically connected family in Texas. In my 2006 post, I was talking about the public figure Scott McClellan, and his visible part in the Bush presidency-- on television, at the podium, in the public eye. Invariably, Washington reporters I met would tell me what a good person McClellan was... in person. "Great guy to work with." And they almost always said the same thing about why his performances were so excruciating. "Well, he's in a tough spot.." And then their voices would trail off, as if to say: let's not talk about that.

But it was way more than a tough spot. He was the point person for what had become a kind of propaganda presidency, a category hard to discern because all presidencies engage in propaganda. The shocking thing is that McClellan knows this now, he actually goes there in his explanations, even though the Washington press corps (still) does not. If they did go there, they would be the ones in a tough spot. As Dan Froomkin noted in Monday's White House Watch column for washingtonpost.com:

"The significance of McClellan's book is that his detailed recounting of what he saw from the inside vindicates pretty much all the central pillars of the Bush critique that have been chronicled here and elsewhere for many years now. Among them:

* That Bush and his top aides manipulated the country into embarking upon an unnecessary war on false pretenses;

* That Bush is an incurious man, happily protected from dissenting views inside the White House's bubble of self-delusion;

* That Karl Rove's huge influence on the Bush White House erased any distinction between policy and politics, so governing became about achieving partisan goals, not the common good;

* That Vice President Cheney manipulates the levers of power;

* That all those people who denied White House involvement in the leak of CIA agent Valerie Plame's identity were either lying or had been lied to;

* That the mainstream media were complicit enablers of the Bush White House and that its members didn't understand how badly they were being played.

Didn't understand and still refuse to see it. (With a couple of exceptions. Also see my doomed attempt to ask The Politico's John Harris about it back in 2006.) The ruining of Scott McClellan was part of something way bigger, and to understand it we have to go back to the beginning of the White House press corps.

In from the cold

The modern era in presidential press think begins with Theodore Roosevelt, who directed that special quarters be built for reporters when renovations were made to the White House during his first term. In 1902 the work was completed: the press got invited into the heart of the presidency and the nature of presidential power shifted.

It shifted because of something Roosevelt had grasped: a national media system, then emergent, needed a big national narrative, and the President would be the main character in that narrative because, once elected, he alone stands for--as well before--the country as a whole. As head of government, ceremonial chief of state, and national protagonist--a triple advantage--the President would always dominate over other actors in the system. What today we call "commanding the stage," because we take for granted that there is a stage, was in 1902 an imaginative leap forward into the media age.

With Roosevelt, often called the first modern president, the executive began its long ascendancy over the other two branches, a development that sped into maximum overdrive with the president whom Scott McClellan served. The incorporation of the press into presidential power actually began a few years earlier with William McKinley, who first invited reporters into the White House and allowed them to hang out in a small room off the North Portico. Prior to that time they had taken to waiting in the street hoping to interview departing visitors. Congress was the nerve center of Washington then, and the more powerful branch. Its press gallery dates from 1841, 60 years before the White House supplied similar quarters.

It was McKinley who instituted regular White House briefings, but he kept his distance: reporters never met with the President and had to conduct interviews outside the building. When Roosevelt took over after McKinley's assassination things changed; the great embrace had begun. T.R. liked reporters. (His uncle was a newspaper editor; Lincoln Steffens, the muckraking journalist, was a friend.) He took them into his confidence, traveled with them in tow and encouraged them to report on the president through the medium of his outsized personality. His notion of the presidency as "bully pulpit" and his decision to invite the press into the White House were parts of the same insight. Ever since then the presidency and the press have glamorized each other.

The stooge figure

That era lasted almost exactly 100 years. Bush engineered a strategic shift, the press part of which I have called Rollback. Scott McClellan was a key figure in that shift, but he seems to have had a change of heart about it, which is important to whether the change becomes permanent or fades with Cheney and Bush gone.

Sensing an institution in decline and uncomfortable with interlocutors of any type, they decided to return the press to where it stood before McKinley: effectively out in the cold. But they didn't go all the way and actually expel reporters from the executive mansion, which would have alerted the country--and the press--to something extreme going on.

Instead the Administration decided to innovate in other ways. It denied the whole theory of the "fourth estate," ridiculed the idea that the press is part of the system of checks and balances, told reporters they were a special interest group rather than a conduit to the public-at-large, wiped out all remaining distinctions between propaganda and public information, and welcomed the de-legitimizing of the news media by allies in the culture war.

"Back e'm up, starve 'em down and drive up their negatives" is the way I summarized this approach. In July 2003 Bush took it further when he installed in the White House briefing room a stooge figure, a pathetic character who had no power, no in-in-the-loop knowledge, no respect from key players in the Administration, no talent for improvised explanation under the lights, and no problem being made to look like an ass in front of the country, the cameras and the rest of the world. As Philadelphia Inquirer's head political writer, Dick Polman, put it: "McClellan's mission was not to merely evade or spin information in the traditional sense. His core purpose was to be the point man for an assertive, even revolutionary, White House effort to delegitimize the mainstream conveyors of the news."

Now these were mere tactics; the strategy was something else entirely. Here's the way I would put it: The Bush forces, led by Dick Cheney, thought they had an insight that canceled out Theodore Roosevelt's insight from 1902. And they had a view of presidential power that contradicted his. Their idea--unappreciated to this day--was to make the executive more illegible, which would increase presidential power on the model of the state trooper's sunglasses. (He can see out but no one can see in.)

This, I think, was an imaginative leap away from Roosevelt's. T.R.'s insight was that the President as national protagonist could, by revealing himself more regularly to the media, begin to dominate the national stage. The president's image had to be controlled, of course, and Roosevelt was quite good at that. Later Administrations would perfect the art of news management. Bush's idea was entirely different. You're more powerful if you don't have to explain, answer questions or admit even the slightest error.

"There's no longer any credibility."

The leap that Roosevelt engineered ("come on in...") led to an increase in presidential power by making the president a bigger figure nationally. For Bush and Cheney greater opacity in government signifies the president's unchallenged power. Don't answer questions; it encourages people to think that you can be questioned. Give up on persuasion; propaganda gets the job done more efficiently. Reason-giving only shows weakness; when the real reasons are elsewhere that shows strength.

Strategic non-communication was the best name I could come up with for this approach. It was a staggering gamble and of course it failed on every front, especially the one most important to Bush: public support for the war in Iraq. In August of 2007, Tim Russert reported on a meeting between Bush and House Republicans that featured some blunt talk. According to Russert, one Republican congressman told Bush: "The word about the war and its progress cannot come from the White House or even you, Mr. President. There's no longer any credibility. It has to come from Gen. Petraeus."

That Congressman was saying a remarkable thing: The White House was no longer a legitimate source of political news about the war in Iraq. It could not be believed on the subject. McClellan is trying to explain how things got to that point, since he now regrets his part in them. Here is what I wrote about that part in April '06.

McClellan's specialty was non-communication; what's remarkable about him as a choice for press secretary is that he had no special talent for explaining Bush's policies to the world. In fact, he usually made things less clear by talking about them. We have to assume that this is the way the President wanted it; and if we do assume that it forces us to ask: why use a bad explainer and a rotten communicator as your spokesman before the entire world? Isn't that just dumb-- and bad politics? Wouldn't it be suicidal in a media-driven age with its 24-hour news cycle?

You would think so, but if the goal is to skate through unquestioned--because the gaps in your explanations are large to start with--to refuse to explain is a demonstration of raw power. (As in "never apologize, never explain.") So this is another reason McClellan was there. Not to be persuasive, but to refute the assumption that there was anyone the White House needed or wanted to persuade-- least of all the press!

McClellan in his book charges that the Bush White House was "continually in campaign mode, never explaining, never apologizing, never retreating. Unfortunately, that strategy also had less justifiable repercussions: never reflecting, never reconsidering, never compromising. Especially where Iraq was concerned."

But where his account and mine really come together is this part about the culture war: "I think the concern about liberal bias helps to explain the tendency of the Bush team to build walls against the media," McClellan writes. Culture war--popular with the base--concealed what was a risky and radical shift in White House communications. "Unfortunately, the press secretary at times found himself outside those walls as well." Right, out in the cold.

It wasn't by accident. When Roosevelt welcomed the press in, he was saying that the modern presidency needed an interlocutor, and would benefit by having a official one on hand. It was exactly this premise that Bush and Cheney rejected, as part of a larger project, creating a more unfettered presidency all around, less accountable to other parts of the system. They wanted the lights to go out on the idea of answering questions from an unpersuaded press. They chose McClellan as the dimmer, and he was dumb enough to let them.

But I don't think they calculated well.

McClellan is not very articulate, but on the Meet the Press this week he managed to put his finger on something. "When you go to war, you have to build bipartisan support and then you have to sustain it," he told Tim Russert. "We couldn't sustain it because we were not open in the beginning, and the president could not go back and admit some of the mistakes that were made early in the, early in the buildup to the war."

Because they were not open in the beginning, and had relied on a phony explanation for the war, because they could not admit what they had done, they needed the opacity thing to work. But that agenda was itself an abuse of power.

Comments

[shadow7]

The role Scotty assumed, quite voluntarily..... was supported and promoted by the White House Press Corps. With the single exception of Helen Thomas, whom the rest of the faux journalists abandoned when she was banished to the rear of the conference room, these wimps were complicit and sold their souls for access to the WH and the same approval from Bush that Scotty relished and needed.

Good read from a source that exposed this years ago: The White House Press Corpse - with an 'e'....
http://tvnewslies.org/html/white_house_press_corpse.html

[dawlishgal]

Bingo! ACCESS is the currency, and truth and balance can bleep themselves. It was what sent Judith Miller into the black pit of corruption and possible loss of it was what prevented other "journalists" from working as PROFESSIONALS. I minored in Journalism with a capital J....back when the first day's work for each writing or editing class was to emphasize the"profession's" obligation to truth and balance.

Then I got a job in advertsing research , in a large and successful agency where it was considered perfectly ethical to suppress negative findings. When I tried to make my case that suppression of bad was just as reprehensible as making up good-- was just another way to lie-- I was pretty much told by "account people" to shut up, until my boss (a psychologist/researcher) made it clear that the department had to maintain some kind of integrity in order to have credibility . (Watch MadMen on A&E...that was the time I worked in a big agency.

I wonder what journalism schools are teaching nowadays...is it the schools that have changed or is it the students? Or is it that the media are owned by corporate conglomerates who are guided by self-interest? Something has happened. I doubt that Watergate could happen nowadays.

[neverbeenfooled]

A fascinating, insightful article.

[nunzia]

I don't find McClellan credible. He wants to hang all the lies, criminality, plunder and destruction on "Washington culture". Wants to say it wasn't the fault of his cronies.
Other than Dad Buscho's administration, what administration reflected that kind of "washington culture"? Closest you can come is Nixon.
Clinton lied about a blow job, nothing on the scale of evil which W and Nixon wallowed in. McClellan, in all these interviews, uses a tactic which Condi Rice uses when called to answer questions before congress. Be long winded, give Indirect lengthly - emphasis on "lengthy" - responses. Use up the time, to limit the number of questions, and maybe even frustrate or throw the questioner off track. Pour our an avalanch of verbiage, to make it appear that you've answered, but dont give 'em the answer.
He's still playing the game he played as Press Sec'y, just trying to sell a book too.
I won't buy it.

[researcher]

he wants to rewrite his history.

expect a lot more of these type of books.

when is powell's book coming out.

traitors leaving a sinking ship.

let the religious folks elect your pres and what do you get? a sociopath

they will be lining up to vote for mc war

the evangels are not only the most war mongers but also the most racist. go figure.

[NightflyLester]

I don't know.. Does BushCo. really have the smarts to pull off this off as a premeditated tactic?

[scottsvine]

Why McClellan's 'attack' on the Bush White House is really a contemptible apologia:

Every interview I've see with Scott McClellan (Russert, Olbermann, Matthews) he has irritatingly consistently insisted that the principal "problem" of the Bush Administration's secrecy and deception can be innocently explained as a simple matter of "good people" having been overcome by "the White House bubble" and a pernicious "culture of the Permanent Campaign". What a crock of horsemanure. These remarks have the absurd ring of a political equivalent of "the Devil made them do it", or "guns don't kill people, it's those gol'darned bullets!". SM's conceptual world apparently has no room to accept the existence of sociopaths or criminals, certainly not inhabiting the WH! What he miserably fails/refuses to acknowledge is the self-evident fact that, NO, they were NOT "good" people who innocently and unwittingly fell victims to that bad, gosh-nasty campaign culture; NO, they were all public servants charged with the public trust, fully conscious of their actions and responsible for the consequences - and spectacularly failed that trust with their astonishingly brazen prevarications and criminal behavior - AND, therefore I might add, owe a full debt to suffer any and all punishment they may have coming to them. To keep blaming "culture" or "bubbles" for criminal and inexcusable behavior by persons who should otherwise be above reproach is a full apology and whitewash - and thus it, (the apologia) too is NOT acceptable.

[Jay Rosen - Huffpost Blogger]

Pre-meditated? Where did I say that? It seems to me they improvised the entire thing, especially after the "original sin" of deceiving the country about the reasons for going to war.

Also, you seem to be forgetting, Sir Lester, that this policy I am describing failed big time. Witness the 28 percent approval rating. The Bush White House has had the worst "communications" office and officers of any president in living memory, or to look at the same facts another way, the greatest bubble ever created by an Administration.

[vfx]

Re McKinley and T.R.

It might be good to comment on how things have changed from today's pervasive instantanious worldwide Youtube videos from cameraphones since the days of Reporters being discreet "for the good of the country" such as not photographing FDR's wheelchair.

The insatible press needs a new story every 30 minutes so even a transparent Presidencey will have problems feeding credible original content to that beast.

[Jay Rosen - Huffpost Blogger]

Someone asked my at PressThink what the other changes were in the period 1902 to 2002. This is what I wrote:

Obviously a lot happens in a period like the one I am talking about, 1902-2002. The main lines of change are: the growing size of the White House press corps especially in the last 30 years, the gradual rise in power of the executive branch compared to Congress, which really accelerated after the Great Depression and the New Deal, the initial period of deference and chumminess that lasted through the Eisenhower, the coming of television and the glamour of the media age with Kennedy especially, who was completely at ease in front of the cameras and in answering questions, the beginning of the loss of deference with the credibility gap suffered by Lyndon Johnson and then of course the onset of the current era with Nixon, Agnew, Rather, culture war, Watergate, gotcha showoffs and all the rest.... Important to insert into that picture the "man with his finger on the button" psychology from Truman to Bush One.... I think that after Nixon elements in the Republican party decided that the national press could and would destroy their guy, and that more could be gained by attacking the news media than by answering its questions.

[joebaggadonuts]

Jay,

Thanks for this article. It really makes me feel for the guy. Who hasn't been fooled and made a tool by some powerful person some time in their life will be some day. There is a lesson here for all of us. We should speak truth to power. We should have the wherewithall to leave bad situations or we shall be nothing but slaves. Only by doing so will we be free. Only if most of us do this will our nation or any organization be its best.

[Deidroni]

It's not too late to impeach. First witness, Scott McClellan.

Ask Rep. Conyers to start impeachment hearings by July 4th.

Let justice be served by having the Congress do their constitutional duty!

[Vinca]

To Deidroni: What I am hoping for, is if McClellan testifies, GW BUSH WILL BE FORCED TO RESIGN, His AUTHORIZATION of the outing of Valerie Plame, IS A CRIME

[Binx101]

HuffPost's Pick

This was a great article. Having been a 'Scott McClellan' myself, I'm amazed at how you captured the perfect framing of the timbre of his existence. It doesn't seem so black and white, when one starts to commit acts of 'not quite right' as opposed to acts that are clearly wrong. It's happened all over corporate America, and some of us have escaped our darkest fates and walked towards the light - irrespective of the cost.

Now imagine being swept up in the aura and importance of alleged National Security weighing in the balance of your words, entire news cycles dedicated to the timbre of your responses or refusals and the gold leafed Presidential seal attached to the podium of which one speaks.

Eventually, Scott McClellan, as you aptly pointed out, confirmed what we have already learned to be true. The difference though, is he has decided to admit it. Perhaps he just couldn't take it anymore after he the White House hangover cleared up. One thing has been very clear - he just made a huge monkey out of Tony Snow, without ever mentioning his name.

I really did love the Opacity vehicle - a natural segue to subsequent - Snow job.

Binx101
The Almost Daily Binx
http://binx101.wordpress.com

[SiberianRat]

Great post, Mr. Rosen, and thoughtful comment, Binx. I'm glad to hear you're now a reformed McClellan. Now, maybe you should be like one of those gangbangers-turned-community-leaders who helps people not be McClellans in the first place. My question is, how does one even get there in the first place? I understand that you, lots of people in corporate America, and of course McClellan and others in politics were/are misled by their "leaders," but is it that people are so blinded that they cease to look for truth, cease to engage in critical thinking? What is the flaw that leads people down the McClellan path in the first place? How do we fix it? The McClellans of the world are only symptoms of the underlying illness...

[Binx101]

This is a question I would rather not answer ... but I will out of respect for the truth. I'm going to be very brief because after many years of consideration I've been able to understand it.

If you knew my family, my upbringing and the history of my ancestors - not to mention the opportunities for me that other people only dream of - you would want to dope slap me unconscious.

It is low self-esteem combined with the euphoria of belonging. Not unlike that doomed love affair with the wrong person - there is an attraction under certain circumstances that transcends reality and the influence of the wonderful people in your life.

It is an unfortunate series of nearly unforgivable choices. I say choice because the effects of the narcotic of the success causes you to know you're doing wrong but you go ahead and do it once more. That is ... until you come to terms with the truth.

It ain't pretty but it's all I got. I'm one of the luckiest humans on this planet and I'll never forget it.

Binx101
The Almost Daily Binx
http://binx101.wordpress.com

[grn1]

Max you have made the unapproachable assumption that these Jews have no moral conscience."Is attributing Jewish ancestry to the Man of Sin not anti-Semitism in its most classical form? It is to anyone who does not understand that many Jews are beleaguered by some Jews indescretion and criminal activities at the cost of all Jews. History Repeat? Are the conspiratorial screeds of Nesta Webster,Henry Ford, and David Duke not replete with passages disturbingly similar to this most recently revealed jeremiad of Hagee and to many of his past sermons? I don't believe any of these examples ever conspired hegemony or violent actions against Jews. Conspiracies have a reason for developing, some even believe they have been directly affected. Not all are incredible.

[Tulka2]

McClellan is still out there pushing a profound lie about the Bush administration. He says, in interview after interview, that one of the root errors was a "permanent campaign". No, that was not the problem because it is actually the President's duty to educate the people. This is the bully pulpit put to good use.
For instance, Obama, if he is wise, will make sure Americans are educated about how other civilized nation's provide decent health care. There are several options and a smart Obama administration will bring the average citizen along in the decision-making process. Right now, when i say, "universal health care" most people will say, "You mean, socialism...?!". Like that's a bad thing.
No, what the Bush administration did wrong was not that they tried to convince the American people of any one thing or another. The problem is that they made a decision to lie to the American people. That's the crime. I hope one day to see them accountable for it.

[MissKaren]

I'll never forget the line from "Dr. No" where No was discussing Oddjob. He was "a utensil." He could be used in any way No and Spectre wished to use him. McClellan was also a utensil and the fork refused to be ditched when it was no longer convenient for Bush and Cheney to use him.

[Garvagh]

Great piece, Jay! Regarding the intentional selection of a person seemingly lacking the ability to do the job, as an act of deliberate strategy, consider the choice of Condoleezza Rice as national security adviser when she had no understanding of the history and cultures of the Middle East. I think there was a very deliberate effort to place compliant stooges in the important slots not occupied personally by Dick Cheney et al.

[spicecakes69]

Jay - thank you for this thorough explanation .... any way to get this on the "normal" Huff Post ? It deserves to be seen by a WIDER audience!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Jay Rosen - Huffpost Blogger]

The "normal" Huffington Post? This one ran at the top of the Huff Post front page for most of the day yesterday, so mission accomplished. Many OffTheBus posts do.

[StephenKMack]

Dear Mr. Rosen,
Your reporting is some of the best I've read, in quite a long time!!!!! Absolutely worthy of the time to read and reread.Will be thinking about the points you make and recalling them as the Campaign rolls on.
Many thanks,
Stephen Mack