by Jen Moore

Created on: May 30, 2008

Two years after leaving the Bush White House, Scott McClellan has joined the ranks of the unbelievers, writing a "tell-all" memoir about the run-up to the war in Iraq, the Valerie Plame scandal, and the propaganda machine running the whole business. The reaction has been fairly predictable as current White House staffers have leaped to the President's defense and McClellan has already been called a traitor on FOX News at least half a dozen times, well before anyone could actually have read and assimilated the book itself.

Speculation has run rampant too on why McClellan would write such a testimony; some have claimed he's bitter about the circumstances of his departure, others that he just wanted to exploit the profit margin inherent in this kind of controversy. No one seems to believe that he feels he is doing the right thing by chronicling the deceitful practices used by the administration, but even if that were the case, McClellan's book comes as too little, too late.

Unless the final chapters of the book offer some surprise that the pundits haven't gotten to yet, McClellan's book tells us nothing that we didn't already know. President Bush decided to go to war in Iraq well before the subject was broached in the public media. Facts were twisted in aid of that goal, and the news media was discouraged from asking real questions about it. And the administration at the very least covered up its role in the leaking of CIA operative Valerie Plame's identity. Bloggers and the occasional minor news outlet have been discussing these subjects since 2003. Sorry, Scott, no one's surprised.

Because, you see, it isn't that people don't know what happened, it's that they don't seem to care. McClellan's book only serves to point out, once again, one of the biggest problems in current American politics: that only scandal gets press time, never the issues. While this would be an excellent opportunity for the major news media to discuss the possibility that there is something seriously wrong with the way this country is being run, or to face up to their own complicity in the Iraq War, instead we hear only about McClellan's "disloyalty" and supposed mercenary impulses. It's a shameful reaction, but not a surprising one. As long as the media can continue to get away with promoting scandal and controversy instead of addressing the issues at hand, this book will only destroy one reputation - Scott McClellan's, whether he deserves it or not.

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