Reporter Barton Gellman reports in his book, The Cheney Vice Presidency, that Vice President Dick Cheney declined an invitation from the president to lead the federal response in the disaster in the wake of Hurricane Katrina in 2005.

The Washington Post, accused of milking its publicity, has been releasing excerpts. Intrepid LA Times writers snagged some embargoed copy, to wit:

Anyone who had face time with Bush said he was smarter than the public believed, and meaner. He spared Cheney the thunderbolts — Rove got the worst of them, when Bush was in a mood to yell — but now and then aides saw the president give Cheney the back of his hand.

“Will you at least go do a fact-finding trip for us?” Bush asked.

“That’ll probably be the extent of it, Mr. President, unless you order otherwise,” Cheney replied. He was the Cheshire Cat inverted, only the smile dissolving, the rest of him still in the chair.

For more, CLICK HERE.

Former White House spokesman Scott McClellan’s critical look at the Bush administration, What Happened: Inside the Bush White House and Washington’s Culture of Deception, isn’t so much an expose as it is his version of events that we largely already knew about.

Anyone who reads the newspapers, newsmags or watches CNN already knows somebody at the White House outed Valerie Plame Wilson as a CIA supervisor (Libby, Rove, Cheney, probably with Bush’s at least tacit approval); that the reasons given for going to war in Iraq were dubious at best (I believe outright phony); and that the administration’s response to Hurricane Katrina was a disaster that compounded the natural disaster and exposed the administration’s inability to govern.

If the hurricanes of 1989 (Hugo – I was in South Carolina at the time) and 1992 (Andrew) taught us anything, it’s that FEMA needs effective planning and execution and is no place to be stowing away inept cronies. Except the people in charge forgot that lesson. It took images of misery in New Orleans to get most of America to take notice. If the 2004 election had been held in 2005, Bush would have lost badly. Even to Kerry! Although Bush may have Myanmar to thank for setting new lows in responsiveness to disaster.

Even as bad as things have gone – a five-year-occupancy with no end in sight, inept response to disaster and a struggling economy – almost one-third of Americans apparently think Bush is a pretty good president. That’s amazing.

What sets McClellan apart is he was a Texas Bushie, one of W’s loyalists. Considered by the Washington press corps to be a rather weak spokesman, McClellan is largely viewed as a little in over his head. One pundit describes his book as Revenge of the Nerd, payback for being pushed around by the likes of Rummy and Cheney and Rove.

And the White House’s response to his book was curious. Rather than deny the essentially undeniable, they said stuff like “That’s not the Scott we knew,” and “He’s in it for the money” (who isn’t?). I imagine they’re just hoping the issue will quietly die down. Hey, it’s hurricane season. Maybe we’ll get lucky!

Let the piling on begin.
The deeply unpopular Bush administration took another hit today as former White House spokesman Scott McClellan released more excerpts of his soon-to-be-published book, What Happened: Inside the Bush White House and Washington’s Culture of Deception.
In essence, he called President Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney and their closest advisers liars.
At the very least, Bush was ill-served by his advisers in matters from the war in Iraq; the Valerie Plame (CIA) leak case in which a working CIA operative was outed; and the botched handling of Hurricane Katrina’s aftermath.
The White House responded today, saying it was “puzzled” by McClellan’s scathing memoir. “This is not the Scott we knew,” said current White House spokeswoman Dana Perino. Expect more forceful responses to discredit the longtime Bush loyalist.

For more on the subject, CLICK HERE.

To order the book, CLICK HERE.