Gotta say, he hung in there alot longer than I would have.

[Wezas]

Press Secretary Scott McClellan is resigning

Also looks like Rove is giving up his policy chief of staff position.

[Summertime]

I guess there is only soo much horsecrap you can recite and reitterate until you finally can't do it any more.. the poor bastard never had a choice.. it's not like he could just start answering peoples questions openly and honestly...

[Stanley Burrell]

At this point, R*** could be downsized to, say, local carwash hubcap cleaner and it still wouldn't fail to quell my paranoia that he'd be up to some opprobrious plot of installing mind-control devices in chrome 22" rims or possibly Dodge Neon 11½"'s...

[Gan]

Both will have multi-million dollar a year book deals and speaking engagements in the upcoming future. Thats the nature of their positions and the aftermath of leaving them.

[Tromp]

He was a deer in headlights with a big target around his chest every time crap went down. I would not of wanted that job except for what Ganalon said above may make it worth it.

[Skirmisher]

http://www.vanityfair.com/features/general/060404fege01

(It is kind of long so I took the parts that caught my eye most and tried to take out some I saw as not important but as always your opinion may vary so the link for the full article is above.)

Words Fail Him

Now that the daily White House briefings are instantly available online, Press Secretary Scott McClellan's mangled sentences, flat-footed evasions, and genial befuddlement have made him the butt of a thousand blogs, as well as of an increasingly savage press corps. Is he a victim, a pawn, or a P.R. disaster?

By MICHAEL WOLFF

Contact him at michael@burnrate.com.

...


A kind of daily Socratic dialogue, or at least an attempt at one, continues to take place in the briefing room in a method of inquiry initiated by Joseph Tumulty, Woodrow Wilson's primary aide and, effectively, the nation's first press secretary: a ritual Q&A that leads to both what the White House wants you to know and away from what it doesn't want you to know. Only, now the dialogue is led by something of a knuckleheaded Socrates, each day struggling and failing to talk his way out of a paper bag.

It's this verbal haplessness that has made Scott McClellan—a pleasant, low-wattage, old-before-his-time young fellow, with, at 38, a wife, no children, and "two dogs and four cats"—the living symbol of this White House's profound and, perhaps, mortal problem with language and meaning. McClellan himself, as though having some terrible social disability, has, standing miserably in the press briefing room every day, become a kick-me archetype. He's Piggy in Lord of the Flies: a living victim, whose reason for being is, apparently, to shoulder public ridicule and pain (or, come to think of it, he's Squealer from Animal Farm). He's the person nobody would ever choose to be.

...

What's more, the Bush administration has taken a further step to downgrade the operation: it's practically Bush policy to see the press corps as irrelevant and out of step with the American people.

...

But here's the thing that seems to have caught many people in and out of the administration quite unawares: outside of any plan or design or strategy (countermanding the plan, really), the briefing has slipped its bonds, defied its relegation, and become the true public face of the White House.

This supposed side-show works now as something like the White House's daily discourse with the nation (if not for the nation as a whole, at least for the ideologically polarized Internet nation) and the world. It's the White House reality series. Or the briefing is our stumblebum version of challenging the P.M. on the House of Commons floor (we get the vitriol without the grandiloquence and good cheer).

Beginning with the advent of the live broadcasts, under Clinton's last press secretary, Mike McCurry, then as a staple of the cable news cycle, and now as endlessly repeated, ever available streaming video, the briefing has become the living, inarticulate, comically absurd voice of the White House. Under Mc-Clellan the briefing is not only the source of news but news itself: McClellan's performance, its degree of ham-handedness, echoed and refracted in a thousand blogs, is a central political event.

...


Anyway, Scott McClellan, ready for prime time or not, may be the first real-time political figure and, arguably, the most public, or most exposed, man in America, gamely, doggedly repeating his set phrases ("We're going to keep focusing on the pressing priorities of the American people"; "We're going to continue to focus on the priorities of the American people"; "We're moving on to the priorities of the American people") long after they've become punch lines.

Putting someone as strikingly out of his depth as McClellan into this job (and keeping him there) could well be part of this administration's contempt for the press. But while that contempt is surely real, installing McClellan here may actually, in another self-awareness gap, have been the administration's idea of a generous act.

...


McClellan, on the other hand, sincere and earnest, might reasonably have been regarded as a kinder, gentler, and, as it happens, more informed representative. He's an insider—a guy in the Texas circle. To that degree, the inner circle might have thought of him as a certain sort of gift to the press—the real Bush thing.

...

He's what the Bush people like to call a straight shooter.

...
No real sense of humor. No over-analyzing anything (one of McClellan's favorite criticisms of the press, and another of his often repeated phrases, is about the "tendency to over-interpret"). What you see is what you get.

In some perhaps crucial sense, he was, when he got the press-secretary job, in 2003, at the age of 35, not only the official representative of what the Bush people stood for but a proud example of it.

My guess is that nobody in the inner circle thought it very important that he couldn't talk, that he had to plod and often struggle through every sentence. Not being able to talk—not being quick enough and facile enough to shape language to your precise and urgent needs—might even have been a further sign of his straight-shooter qualities.

...

Also—and this must surely have been part of the thinking in such a top-down administration—because Scott couldn't talk, he wouldn't be able to say anything for himself. His lack of verbal acumen, his lack of dexterity with a subordinate clause, becomes another part of the way to control the White House message in a White House obsessed with such control. He wouldn't be able to cozy up to the press. That requires a serving-two-masters deftness. A special tonal range. A wink. A nod. An emphasis. A surgical use of modifiers, so that I say what I have to say in such a way that we all understand what I mean to say. A little Kabukiness.

This is not just sophistry, something else that straight shooters don't practice; it's verbal athleticism. Language is the game. You need to have a gift for it.

...

In fact, Iraq, relatively speaking, remains the elephant in the briefing room—nobody really talks about it. But as to everything else, McClellan has become a helpless and irresistible target.

On Rove-Plame-Libby he dumbly delivered a bald denial on Rove's behalf (whereas Rove's actual denial was a study in the nuance of deniability) and therefore became as guilty as Rove and more foolish.

Katrina became the objective correlative of McClellan's inability to connect language to reality ("Flood control has been a priority of this administration from Day One." And "As I have indicated, this is not a time for politics." And again: "This is not a time for finger-pointing or playing politics"), and, in turn, McClellan became the living example of the White House's own befuddlement.

When Dick Cheney shot Harry Whittington, McClellan, in some strange, reflexive slow motion, adopted the Katrina defense—whatever happened on the ground was so complicated and the scene so remote that the White House prudently waited to amass all reports and all data before responding to the event.

On Dubai Ports, an obvious shocked-shocked thing for the press and everybody not personally associated with the White House, McClellan was, once again, helpless to hit the ball back—to one reporter's asinine question about how many American companies run Arab ports, he just stood there blinking.

Every day, he's pulped, pummeled, spit upon for speaking White House untruths—or for not speaking them well enough.

It is so bad, and so constantly public—every misspoken word, every stutter, every repetition, repeated mercilessly across the information universe—that he can only hope that it's gotten bad enough for him to get a sympathy vote.

...


So is he purposely being sacrificed? McClellan looks and acts like a pawn, so perhaps he is. And why else wouldn't you fire someone who is so obviously not up to it? There must be method here.

...

But, personally, I think the true answer is that the Bush people have no idea what they're doing here. Language exists for these guys only as a bullying tactic (if they say we're at war, then we're at war). They rule by repetition—that's their truncheon. Their whole theory, to the extent they theorize, is to keep it simple, stupid—in fact, to mock the people who make it complicated. The problem is that Scott McClellan isn't really a bully. He's rather a pantywaist. So something of a reversal has happened. The press is now the bully and Scott Mc-Clellan is recognizable to everyone as the kid who, unfairly and cruelly, to be sure, gets instant-ly set upon and pulled apart. Indeed, he reminds us all, disgustingly, of our own inarticulateness (which may not be the best way to get the sympathy vote).


Michael Wolff, a Vanity Fair contributing editor, is the author of Autumn of the Moguls (HarperBusiness) and Burn Rate: How I Survived the Gold Rush Years on the Internet (Simon & Schuster).

[Back]

Ari Fleischer was so superior... he made McClellan look like a 3rd grader. Surprised Scott lasted this long. I used to read White House press briefings every day, until it was clear Scott was full of it.

To clarify, Ari was far more an artful dodger than Scott. I was sad to see Ari leave so early. I saw the possible candidates for Scott’s replacement. I don’t remember any of the names and never heard of them. One woman is holding the second rank in picks from what I gather.

[Sean of the Thread]

He was a deer in headlights with a big target around his chest every time crap went down. I would not of wanted that job except for what Ganalon said above may make it worth it.

The man was hardly a deer in headlights.. he has more wits about him then you've ever had pubic hairs. The man did an excellent job at quite possibly one of the hardest jobs in politics.

It's not just him I'll praise.. any PS from any administration has got to have balls of steel and an uber intellect to fill that position.

The guy will make an excellent living post retirement and as far as I'm concerned good for him.. he has had an excellent career and should be rewarded as such.

[Skirmisher]

The man was hardly a deer in headlights.. he has more wits about him then you've ever had pubic hairs. The man did an excellent job at quite possibly one of the hardest jobs in politics.

More wits about him? Only if you are including those of the White House Press Corps. He was way out of his league.

It's not just him I'll praise.. any PS from any administration has got to have balls of steel and an uber intellect to fill that position.

No, to the intellect, yes to the balls of steel.

The guy will make an excellent living post retirement and as far as I'm concerned good for him.. he has had an excellent career and should be rewarded as such.

He took his lumps while lying day in and day out for the President and if that is what qualifies as an excellent career then he sure did and yes, I have no doubt he will make at least good money with this on his resume.

[Tromp]

[QUOTE=Xyelin]The man was hardly a deer in headlights.. he has more wits about him then you've ever had pubic hairs. [QUOTE]

Where do you get off talking about my pubic hairs!!!!!

I never thought of SM as an idiot. He just had a tough job that was set up to fail a whole bunch. He knew that probably going in thus the deer in the headlights thing. I think you misinterpreted my post a bit.