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!

Scott McClellan, the once-loyal Bush believer who wrote a stinging rebuke of the Bush Administration, appeared on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart Monday.
McClellan said he was a bit surprised at how personal the attacks were from the White House in reacting to What Happened.
Stewart challenged McClellan’s assertion in the book that the deceptions that took place weren’t intentional.

To tune in to the interview (two-parter), CLICK HERE
And a bonus reading by the B-52s’ Fred Schneider, with a little Love Shack touch.