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May 28, 2008

McClellan Reveals a Recognizable Character

It is with great interest that I have been reading about former White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan’s new book. We all have known for years now that something is really wrong with President Bush beyond any political or philosophical differences we may have with him. He should be able to press his agenda forward, yet for some reason he stirs up a deep level of disdain from even members of his own party that is hard to explain, and they struggle to maintain a wall of separation from his "taint." What is the reason? I think McClellan nails it.

The fundamental feature of Bush’s personality that actually does him in really is not his lack of intellectual curiosity, his lack of candor in leading us into war, or the quality of his advisers, though all of these are roundly criticized by McClellan. The clincher – the real underlying problem – is Bush’s penchant for “self-deception.” Without that, he either would not have done what he has done, or he would have been so blatantly an awful politician and person that he never would have been placed in the Oval Office in the first place.

His self-deception allowed him to avoid the intellectual debate that might have pointed out the flaws in his "instinct," and had he avoided his ill-founded "instinctive" pursuits, he would not have needed to fall back on obfuscation to justify them for the American people. Moreover, had he not been so inclined to deceive himself, he would not have surrounded himself with less-than stellar aides who were better at flattery than policy. Most important, without the self-deception, he would be unable to convincingly project the sort of sincerity and honesty that has basically bamboozled his closest aides and supporters and kept him in the game. People can feel it when someone is lying and knows it; but when the liar is also lying to himself, it becomes very difficult for most people to recognize the dishonesty behind the innocent doe-eyes.

McClellan’s description of Bush’s response to persistent rumors he used cocaine in his younger days clearly reveals the problem:

The book recounts an evening in a hotel suite "somewhere in the Midwest." Bush was on the phone with a supporter and motioned for McClellan to have a seat.

"'The media won't let go of these ridiculous cocaine rumors,' I heard Bush say. 'You know, the truth is I honestly don't remember whether I tried it or not. We had some pretty wild parties back in the day, and I just don't remember.'"

"I remember thinking to myself, How can that be?" McClellan wrote. "How can someone simply not remember whether or not they used an illegal substance like cocaine? It didn't make a lot of sense."

Bush, according to McClellan, "isn't the kind of person to flat-out lie."

"So I think he meant what he said in that conversation about cocaine. It's the first time when I felt I was witnessing Bush convincing himself to believe something that probably was not true, and that, deep down, he knew was not true," McClellan wrote. "And his reason for doing so is fairly obvious — political convenience."

In the years that followed, McClellan "would come to believe that sometimes he convinces himself to believe what suits his needs at the moment." McClellan likened it to a witness who resorts to "I do not recall."

"Bush, similarly, has a way of falling back on the hazy memory to protect himself from potential political embarrassment," McClellan wrote, adding, "In other words, being evasive is not the same as lying in Bush's mind."

As a fellow member of the “disgruntled” former right-wing staffer’s club, having gained that unpopular distinction following a stint working for a politician who has the same, uncanny core self-deception problem as the President, and having tried to no avail to warn others of the danger, I am glad McClellan has done such a good job describing this particular personality type.

Nevertheless, the self-deception problem is not reserved to our leaders; far too many American voters engage in it on a regular basis. Bush's supporters and partisans are already jumping up to criticize McClellan ("Scott the Snitch," in the words of Matt Drudge), while assiduously avoiding his message.

Posted by Becky at May 28, 2008 10:47 AM