Bob Dole Sends a Friendly Email to Scott McClellan

"Miserable creatures:"

"There are miserable creatures like you in every administration who don’t have the guts to speak up or quit if there are disagreements with the boss or colleagues," Dole wrote in a message sent yesterday morning. "No, your type soaks up the benefits of power, revels in the limelight for years, then quits, and spurred on by greed, cashes in with a scathing critique."

...

"In my nearly 36 years of public service I've known of a few like you," Dole writes, recounting his years representing Kansas in the House and Senate. "No doubt you will 'clean up' as the liberal anti-Bush press will promote your belated concerns with wild enthusiasm. When the money starts rolling in you should donate it to a worthy cause, something like, 'Biting The Hand That Fed Me.' Another thought is to weasel your way back into the White House if a Democrat is elected. That would provide a good set up for a second book deal in a few years"

Dole assures McClellan that he won't read the book -- "because if all these awful things were happening, and perhaps some may have been, you should have spoken up publicly like a man, or quit your cushy, high profile job"

...

He signs the email simply: "BOB DOLE"

Dole explains the reasons for the email here, and they are, sadly, personal. He keeps using the word "turncoat" which really undermines his point, because it suggests (without intending that suggestion) that Scott McClellan's crime is telling true tales out of school. Where in fact Dole's real beef is that he's lying.

Not that he's disloyal, but dishonest.

McClellan's claims are self-refuting. His offers up his integrity to establish his claims are true -- but if he in fact had the integrity he claims as his offer of proof, he would have resigned not terribly long into his tenure. So he comes to us now, inadvertently confessing his own lack of integrity or honor, and asks us to believe him.

McClellan didn't need to write a book indicting the Bush Administration. His own three year post as WH spokesman -- an ineffectual, bumbling fool and milquetoast who even managed to make the WH press corps look omnicompetent by comparison -- is a much greater indictment.

He was supposed to project authority and competence. Instead he projected weakness, confusion, and ineptitude. Having been stupidly promoted far above his abilities and exposed as the feckless incompetent that he is, his job prospects for serving as the spokesman for anything loftier than a regional tire distributor are pretty dim. This is his last, best chance to make serious coin.

And to answer Allah's question: Yes, the fact that he was paid a smallish advance ($100,000) means that of course he can only make more money than that by selling a hell of a lot more books than a $100,000 advance would typically predict.

Not only that, but a bigger advance means a bigger promotional budget in order to make sure a book at least makes back most of its advance. A small advance means less promotion. And that means little Scottie McClellan has to do most of the promotion himself -- by making the juiciest possible claims that libel law will permit.

Dick Morris had an interesting point -- there's nothing really in this book. Facts would be game-changing, politically. But McClellan has precious few to offer. From the excerpts, he seems to offer only his own interpretations of facts already on the record, and, given his general stupidity, seem less authoritative than the interpretations and critiques offered up by your average small-market newspaper columnist. He also offers some rather implausible speculations -- Rove and Scooter Libby almost never talked (huh?), so when they did talk, it must have been about Plame -- which is the sort of noodling guesswork lowly bloggers offer up on a daily basis.

So, what do we have? We have a borderline retard not included in any significant policymaking meetings, basically given a set of talking points every day and told "Go read these to the press; if you have trouble with a longer word, try sounding it out," who now offers his take on matters he knew very little about.

But because his take is anti-Bush, he's suddenly elevated to the status of Sage, and, apparently, credited with the psionic power of telepathic scanning of the thoughts of Karl Rove.

posted by Ace at 04:31 PM

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