POL: Washington Wil joins Baghdad Bob in retirement

[cartman]

Can't say this is too surprising. The press corps was starting to really turn on him and he spent more time trying to duck and cover than get a message out.

Unfortunately for Texans, he's probably headed back here to help work on his mom's gubernatorial campaign.

hxxp://msnbc.msn.com/id/12387465/

White House press secretary resigning
‘I have given it my all,’ Scott McClellan tells president

WASHINGTON - White House press secretary Scott McClellan said Wednesday he is resigning, continuing a shakeup in President Bush’s administration that has already yielded a new chief of staff and could lead to a change in the Cabinet.

Appearing with Bush on the White House South Lawn just before the president boarded a helicopter at the start a trip to Alabama, McClellan, who has parried with reporters on Iraq and on intelligence issues, told Bush: “I have given it my all sir and I have given you my all sir, and I will continue to do so as we transition to a new press secretary.”

The president and McClellan joked about how they hoped to meet up again in Texas, where the two first worked together when Bush was governor.

[Fonzie]

I've only been paying attention to politics for about 20 years, but I can't recall a more uncomfortable, unpolished press secretary. Every one of his meetings with the press made me feel uncomfortable.

Good riddance.

[flere-imsaho]

I'm surprised he lasted this long.

[ice4277]

Originally Posted by Fonzie

I've only been paying attention to politics for about 20 years, but I can't recall a more uncomfortable, unpolished press secretary. Every one of his meetings with the press made me feel uncomfortable.

Good riddance.

Seriously. He was friggin awful.

[jeff061]

Got to be one of the worst jobs in the world though. The guys pulling his strings kept contradicting the scripts they gave him.

[Flasch186]

I felt sympathy for him, he had one of the hardest jobs ever. I wish him good luck in the future as Im sure half of what he said or had to say he probably didnt believe.

[Maple Leafs]

I love White House press secretaries. Every press conference is like a guy getting busted by his girlfriend, just many times more polished.

Her (walks into computer room unexpectedly): Hey, you're looking at porno!
Him (covering screen): I've said in the past, quite emphatically, that I don't do that and will not do that.
Her: But I can see it on the screen.
Him: I don't believe that to be the case.
Her: It's right there! Look!
Him: I really don't see any reason to conintue this line of questioning.
Her: So you're saying you're not looking at porno even though it's right there on the screen?
Him: (sighs) I believe I've already covered this.

[SirFozzie]

The other part about Karl Rove giving up policy:

Rove will remain deputy chief of staff to President Bush, but he will drop his portfolio as policy coordinator -- a job he assumed a year ago -- and once again concentrate his focus on politics as the 2006 mid-term elections approach, senior administration officials said.

In other words, expect the dirty trick machine to be turned up.. no.. not to 11.. to 12.

(It still boggles my mind to see more people haven't been arrested for the Election 02 incident in NH (and the fact that the National Republican committee paid over $1million in legal expenses for the folks who did it)

[kcchief19]

It's likely we'll never know whether McClellan was a bad press secretary because of his own weaknesses or because of the situations in which he was placed. The only other press secretary in the last 15 years to get pounded like McClellan did was Mike McCurry, and I think McCurry fared slightly better simply because he got into fewer instances where his credibility was in question but rather the credibility of his boss was more in question.

There are certainly a myriad of possibilities for the failings of McClellan as press secretary, and unless he writes a tell-all book I'm not sure we'll ever know. Did people lie to him and send him out to lie to the press? Did people tell him the truth about what was happening and he went out and lied to the press on his own? There are ways to diffuse questions without answering them, and McClellan and the White House have rarely taken that tact -- instead of side-stepping questions, they answered them head-on only be shown later the answers were not accurate. That will lead to a credibilty hit every time.

Right now, I'll give McClellan the benefit of the doubt and believe that instances in he provided information to the press he later retracted or has been show to be incorrect was due to people lying to him -- i.e., Scooter Libby telling McClellan had nothing to do with the CIA leak.

But clearly this is the best for both him and the White House. The press corps hammered him pretty good last week, and as they have been pounding him he's been getting testier and testier. That's not a good situation for a press secretary.

[chinaski]

and lets not forget the 3 indicted of rigging the vote recount in Ohio...
http://www.cleveland.com/election/pl...340.xml&coll=2

[Toddzilla]

I don't have much (any) love for Scotty, but my god has one man ever had to make more chicken salad out of chicken shit in his life than this guy? Knowing what we know now that likely went on on the oval office - I'll use the Plame leak as an example - and how the Press Sec was necessarily kept out of the loop, I'm surprised he lasted this long. I hope he gets a good pension and retires comfortably somewhere.

[kcchief19]

Originally Posted by Maple Leafs

I love White House press secretaries. Every press conference is like a guy getting busted by his girlfriend, just many times more polished.

Her (walks into computer room unexpectedly): Hey, you're looking at porno!
Him (covering screen): I've said in the past, quite emphatically, that I don't do that and will not do that.
Her: But I can see it on the screen.
Him: I don't believe that to be the case.
Her: It's right there! Look!
Him: I really don't see any reason to conintue this line of questioning.
Her: So you're saying you're not looking at porno even though it's right there on the screen?
Him: (sighs) I believe I've already covered this.

I think I saw this briefing on C-SPAN!

[yabanci]

good times...

Mokhiber: Why do you refuse to answer the question whether Karl Rove said that Joseph Wilson's wife was "fair game"?

Scott McClellan: I think we have been through this now -

Mokhiber: But you won't answer the question?

Scott McClellan: - for two days in a row -

Mokhiber: You have been dodging it. Did he say it?

Scott McClellan: I did answer the question.

Mokhiber: Did he say it?

Scott McClellan: Again, I answered that question --

Mokhiber: What was the answer?

Scott McClellan: -- it's been asked for two days now -

Mokhiber: What was the answer, though?

Scott McClellan: - it's been addressed -

Mokhiber: What was the answer?

Scott McClellan: I'm not going to go back through it today, because we have been through it the last couple of days. I've pointed out that there are some who are trying to politicize this investigation for partisan political gain. And that's unfortunate. There is an investigation going on. No one wants to get to the bottom of this more than this White House.

Mokhiber: Why don't you just say - I don't want to answer the question?

Scott McClellan: Anybody else?

Mokhiber: Why don't you say - I don't want to answer that question?

[flere-imsaho]

That was a particularly good one.

NPR had Mike McCurry on last night and he was pretty sympathetic for McClellan. Said the job was even tougher now than when he (McCurry) was press secretary. He also suggested that it might be time to do away with the role. Since it's more efficient to distribute news via other channels, all having the press secretary up in front of the press serves to do is give the press a punching bag.

[Dutch]

Originally Posted by flere-imsaho

Since it's more efficient to distribute news via other channels, all having the press secretary up in front of the press serves to do is give the press a punching bag.

Maybe we should just cut through the bullshit and just let George Stepanopolis distribute the news each day to everybody.

[sachmo71]

he's one of those guys who may actually be in pretty good shape but looked fat.

[MrBigglesworth]

Originally Posted by flere-imsaho

That was a particularly good one.

NPR had Mike McCurry on last night and he was pretty sympathetic for McClellan. Said the job was even tougher now than when he (McCurry) was press secretary. He also suggested that it might be time to do away with the role. Since it's more efficient to distribute news via other channels, all having the press secretary up in front of the press serves to do is give the press a punching bag.

I think we should go the opposite way and have the President answer more questions directly from the press and from the opposition party. We'd get more gems like, "I'm the decider."

[jeff061]

I'm not sure he could actually get a full sentence out in that kind of environment.

[Fighter of Foo]

I remember reading abook that detailed McCurry's time as Press Secretary. Not sure if it was a biography or what, I couldn't find it doing a quick search on Amazon, but it was a very interesting read. Suffice to say, there's a lot going on in between briefings and what's shown on TV is usually only a glimpse of the full story.

That being said, the job of the press secretary gets exponentally more difficult the more ducking and covering they have to do. Maybe I'm wrong, but it seems like when there's little/no BS'ing going on from both sides(admittedly not very often), the job works the way it's supposed to. As soon as that breaks down, it seems like press conferences devolve into entertaining TV and not much else.

[MrBigglesworth]

More greatest hits:

Q So as the Press Secretary, are you satisfied with the way this was handled?

MR. McCLELLAN: Well, I know that the Vice President's Office was working to pull together information and make sure that information got out. And the Vice President felt that Mrs. Armstrong should be the first one to go out there and provide that information to the public, which she did -- and she reached out early Sunday morning to do so.

Q And you're satisfied with the way --

MR. McCLELLAN: You can always look back at these issues and look at how to do a better job.

Q Well, it's not really a hindsight issue here. I mean, the Vice President made a decision about how the public should be notified that basically is at odds with the standard practice of how the President's own press operation and this White House notifies the public; isn't that right?

MR. McCLELLAN: Well, again, this was handled by the Vice President's Office. The Vice President thought that Mrs. Armstrong should be the first one to give that information out, since she was an eyewitness.

Q But let's just be clear here. The Vice President of the United States accidentally shoots a man and he feels that it's appropriate for a ranch owner who witnessed this to tell the local Corpus Christi newspaper, and not the White House press corps at large, or notify the public in a national way?

MR. McCLELLAN: Well, I think we all know that once it is made public, then it's going to be news and all of you all are going to be seeking that information.

Poor Scotty. I think he did his best in a bad situation.