The PublicAffairs division of Perseus Books has published a memoir by former White House press secretary, Scott McClellan. The book is titled, What Happened Inside the Bush White House and Washington’s Culture of Deception.

It somewhat overshadows an editorial by Douglas Feith, Undersecretary of Defence for Policy for four years from mid-2001. Published in the Wall Street Journal, How Bush Sold the War is a highly critical assessment of the White House’s foreign policy positions — and one with which I find myself largely in agreement. But unlike Feith’s well-reasoned and carefully considered judgement, McClellan’s tell-all memoir is getting all the press. After all, a book by a man on the lecture circuit needs selling.

Here’s how I reckon the conversation between McClellan and his publisher went:

Scott McClellan, author: Hey, I want to cash in on a book deal, like all the other losers who’re out of jobs and get ghostwriters tell their inside-track stories. At least I was actually employed by the White House. Unlike, say, Joe Wilson.

Peter Osnos, publisher: Not sure a PR’s story is going to sell well. You lot are not much more sympathetic than lawyers and estate agents, in the eyes of the public, and the media hate your kind. So what do you propose writing about?

McClellan: Bush, and what a great job I did defending him in difficult times.

Osnos: Bye-bye. Nice talking to you. May I recommend Vantage Press? Vanity publishing won’t cost you that much, and most people never even notice.

McClellan: Okay, what would you need?

Osnos: To make money? How about inside-track confessions? Sordid tales of sex and betrayal? Did you know Bush lied about the war? Did you have doubts about White House policy?

McClellan: No, not really. If I had, I would have taken my own advice, as I said about Dick Clarke when he published his memoir, Against All Enemies: “Well, why, all of a sudden, if he had all these grave concerns, did he not raise these sooner? This is one-and-a-half years after he left the administration. And now, all of a sudden, he’s raising these grave concerns that he claims he had. And I think you have to look at some of the facts. One, he is bringing this up in the heat of a presidential campaign. He has written a book and he certainly wants to go out there and promote that book. Certainly let’s look at the politics of it. His best buddy is Rand Beers, who is the principal foreign policy advisor to Senator Kerry’s campaign. The Kerry campaign went out and immediately put these comments [that Mr. Clarke made] up on their website.”

Osnos: Best you never bring that paragraph up in public again. We can’t have people questioning our publishing ethics, now can we? Okay, let’s try another angle. Did Bush and Cheney confide in you?

McClellan: No, they didn’t. I just made press statements. Karl Rove actually ran the show.

Osnos: Then here’s an idea: write how the evil twins, Karl Bush and George W. Rove, didn’t confide in you, and told you only what they thought you needed to know to lie to the media.

McClellan: Like what?

Osnos: Take Katrina.

McClellan: Her name was Monica, and that wasn’t Bush, anyway.

Osnos: No, you idiot, the hurricane.

McClellan: Oh yeah. Forgot about that. What about it? I had my hands full defending the White House against charges that they should have violated states rights to send in the cavalry, when the fools in charge of Louisiana didn’t bother to summon federal assistance. Not one reporter would believe that Bush’s powers are actually limited by the constitution.

Osnos: You were the spin doctor, right? Did you set up disaster photo-ops?

McClellan: That’s my job. PRs stage photo-ops.

Osnos: Excellent. Nobody likes staged photo ops. Like spin, or PR, they’re synonymous with insincerity and lies. So just explain matter-of-factly how they were staged, and your book will sell like hotcakes. Nothing of actual substance required.

McClellan: And then?

Osnos: Well, just write how Bush screwed up on this, that or the other, in your extremely well-informed opinion. Without hindsight, book publishers like me would be out of business, and great authors like you would never make the bestseller lists.

McClellan: But my opinion wasn’t well-informed.

Osnos: Who cares? You stood on the podium in the White House briefing room, didn’t you? You have hindsight, don’t you? So you were the only dolt who actually said “yes” to a question on whether Saddam was involved in 9/11. Most people think that was a Freudian slip anyway, because they think a press secretary is supposed to be well-informed of what goes on in the inner circle. People will believe whatever you say now, just because of that White House seal behind you, and the hindsight in front of you. Hindsight will not only make you look well-informed, but it will make you look like you were smarter than them all along.

McClellan: Yeah, I guess. So I write about what I think about Iraq, and the PR job leading up to it — before I was in charge of PR, mind you — that sort of thing?

Osnos: Exactly! Or take the Plame affair. Everyone knows a special investigation failed to turn up anything incriminating at all, except maybe against that Armitage fellow over at State, who wasn’t even being investigated. Bush, Cheney and Rove never did tell you about their role in leaking her identity, did they?

McClellan: Of course not. They knew nothing about it. Well, except that Joe Wilson was a proven liar, and then offered to campaign for John Kerry. Even Kerry washed his hands of him. I advised the White House that if he’s too toxic even for the Democrats, they’d better not comment at all, because that would only give his story credit it didn’t deserve.

Osnos: No, you prat. Want to make money from your book? Just write that the cabal didn’t tell you anything, but they did “collude” to get their stories straight, so they wouldn’t make the mistake that poor fool Libby made. Presumably, this is standard PR advice, but don’t mention that. Just say they met at the time to discuss the Plame case and how Fitzgerald’s investigation might affect the White House. This makes them look like liars, without actually calling them liars, and without implicating you in any way. So you get to dodge lawsuits, and the book will sell millions. Then, when they heed your advice about Joe Wilson once again — not to respond to your book, for fear of looking defensive — everyone will believe they’re guilty as sin. The headline will read: “Bush White House doesn’t deny that Rove and Cheney were in cahoots”. They’re hung by what everyone will think is their own petard — not knowing it’s yours — and you’ll come out smelling like roses.

McClellan: But I have no idea what they actually discussed.

Osnos: Who cares? Write exactly that, in fact. In fact, not taking you into their confidence suggests dishonesty. So why don’t you call it a “culture of deception” or something?

McClellan: But I don’t think calling the White House deliberately dishonest is very smart. Or very honest.

Osnos: So write about “Washington’s culture of deception”. If Barack Obama can say it, why can’t you?

McClellan: Won’t all this look rather dishonourable?

Osnos: Look, Scotty. Mind if I call you Scotty? There are a million people out there who already believe all the adjectives in the world aren’t enough to describe the evil of the Bush cabal. They already believe every word you have yet to write, and more importantly, every word you won’t write. Most won’t even bother to read the book, but will blog about it anyway. Just write them something that doesn’t conflict with their partisan prejudices, and you’ll come out looking like the brave dissenter who did your duty but whose honour now compels him to go public. Who cares that you’re not going public with anything of actual substance? For that matter, who cares about honour? This is Bush we’re talking about, remember?

McClellan: Wow. And I thought I was pretty hot stuff as a spin doctor.

Osnos: No. You gave two-page press releases to journalists who are paid to read them. A mechanical monkey can do that. I’m hot stuff. I have to sell turgid 500-page tomes filled with the partisan drivel of non-entities to a million illiterate nobodies, and get them onto the NYT and Amazon.com bestseller lists to boot. You’re an amateur. That’s why you’re on that side of the desk, and I’m on this side. You have no idea how to spin stories.

McClellan: I see now what you mean by your “innovative and aggressive new model of publishing” that ensures profitability. I’m impressed. Just remember to put in the blurb something like that I was kind of the power behind the throne — one of Bush’s closest aides, or something — and that the White House couldn’t say anything without going through me. I hear what you say. You’re a professional. So am I, so let’s go make some money. I must say, this book-writing business is pretty cool. Used to be you had to actually save for your retirement, and protect your integrity. Now you can just turn around and screw everyone you worked for and make a killing. Here I thought PR was a pretty dishonest but profitable job. It’s clearly got nothing on book publishing.

Osnos: Indeed it doesn’t. Now let’s go find some rare whiskey to toast with. I’m buying.

McClellan: Och aye. A wee dram would numb the pain of prosperity.

Osnos: That it does, Scotty. That it does.

Over at Commentary South Africa, Laurence notes an interview with fiction writer John Grisham, in which he says:

I think what the Republicans have done in past elections is brilliant. Because, they’ve convinced a lot of people to vote for them against their own economic self-interest, and they’ve done that by skillfully manipulating a handful of social issues, primarily abortion and gay rights and sometimes gun control. And the Republicans have used those to scare a lot of people into voting for Republican candidates. It’s skillful manipulation.

Laurence’s comment is that it’s morally questionable to expect that “people should use their vote as a tool for self-enrichment, by voting for whichever party promises to give them the greatest largesse from the state treasury”. And he’s quite right.

He also points out that the Republicans haven’t exactly been true to their small-government roots, but I’d argue (and the political promises seem to bear me out) the Democrats in the US would be considerably worse.

What few on the left recognise, or what they deliberately fudge, is that the Republicans in the US consist of an uncomfortable alliance between three constituencies: economic conservatives (i.e. small-government libertarians), foreign policy conservatives (hawks who believe the best defence is superior strength), and social conservatives (consisting mostly of the religious right). Even those constituencies are split, for example the foreign policy conservatives are divided between those who believe in strength as a useful tool in the service of liberty and democracy, and isolationists who believe government shouldn’t be entrusted with anything, including foreign wars. Calling all Republicans social conservatives is a false characterisation, and betrays either the rhetoric of a shallow partisanship, or a profound lack of understanding of American voters.

It’s a step too far, moreover, to say that people vote against their own economic self-interest. In fact, if they happened to be rich, undoubtedly their votes would be considered selfish. True, “the rich”, as leftists describe anyone who has achieved middle-class success or more, often know how a society creates prosperity. (The exception seems to be the populists in the ego-driven entertainment industry.)

But classical liberals, or economic conservatives — call them what you will — might vote against government handouts even if they’re not rich themselves. Not because they selflessly forgo them (or stupidly pass them up, as Grisham appears to believe, rather patronisingly). They vote against handouts because they believe those handouts are not in their self-interest. They believe that their individual right to determine how their income is spent and their capital is allocated is in their best interest, while tax-and-spend government programmes are not. They believe that individual productivity creates wealth, and government redistribution destroys it.

It’s true, as Laurence notes, that whether Republicans have been true to this economic view of small government and low taxes is debatable. Many on the economic right (as opposed to the social or foreign policy right) would argue that it has not. That it betrayed the Reagan legacy, and the Gingrich revolution, and that this cost them a heavy price in the 2006 mid-term elections, and might cost them even more later this year.

More interesting, however, is the general mischaracterisation of the economic right, because the same generalisations are made elsewhere in the world, including in South Africa. Those who argue the economic virtues of free markets, believing that they not only encourage wealth creation, but that this dynamic creates jobs and improves the quality of life of all of society, are all too often tarred with the same brush as the religious right and social conservatives. And they, in turn, are caricatured as bigoted.

When John Grisham says economic conservatives who vote Republican do so because of “abortion” or “gay rights” or “gun control”, he’s using exactly the same rhetorical technique as someone who caricatures the South African economic right — fiscal conservatives, free marketeers, classical liberals, free traders and libertarians — as “racist” or “counter-revolutionary” or “Uncle Toms” or “elitist” or “coconuts” or “Eurocentric”. Witness the more rabid partisans: the rhetoric of the ANC Youth League, for example, is littered with examples. The thing is, not only are such caricatures often false, but they miss the economic point entirely. And the thing is, they’re designed to miss the point.

With Fred Thompson having dropped out of the race, it’s time to weigh up the alternatives for the Republican nomination, from my perch on the southern end of Africa. What matters to me in an American president is foreign policy, of course, and economic policy. Bonus points for not being a bigot, a prig, a whinger or a preacher, but as I’ve written before, whether Americans permit gays to be married, guns to be carried or God to be harried, is really up to them.

Mitt Romney looks like a conservative Bill Clinton. He’s trying to be all things to all people, and that’s going to make him the lowest-common-denominator in office. I don’t trust the fellow. Mike Huckabee is a social conservative, not an economic conservative, and I’m looking for the exact opposite. Besides, I can’t take someone endorsed by Chuck Norris seriously.

John McCain is likeable enough, but neither his individual freedom record, nor his economic policy, appeal that much. He’s also lent his name to a heavy-handed and misguided campaign-finance law, and thinks government-enforced cap-and-trade schemes are just great. He’s great on foreign policy, perhaps, and might be able to appeal to the broad centre, but those are qualities that aren’t unique to him, and the rest of his positions are not what a classical liberal would want.

Which leaves Rudy Giuliani. He’s worked successfully with Democrats. He cleaned up New York, which used to be a poster city for crime, decadence and decay. He impressed on 9/11. He’s not going to surrender the free world to radicals and extremists and terrorists and fascists. And he doesn’t whine all the time about attacks from the vicious and vast left-wing wopist conspiracy.

But the clincher, for me, is set out in an excellent article on his tax plan by Steve Forbes, publisher of Forbes magazine and one-time candidate for president famous for his radical flat-tax proposals. Read it, and then tell me why Giuliani shouldn’t be the GOP nominee.

2007 turned out to be a pretty good year for George W. Bush.

Late last year, voters turfed Republicans out of Congress over either lack of spending restraint or dissatisfaction with progress in Iraq or both, depending who you ask. (Robert Novak: war; Alan Greenspan: spending; Rush Limbaugh: both, and liberals suck; Reason magazine: both, and government sucks.)

This electoral loss, which meant Bush could no longer rely on a compliant Congress to send him only bills he likes, merely reinforced the view that Bush now is a lame duck, unable to govern effectively. (CNN: Is Bush already a lame duck?; Lou Dobbs: Beware the lame duck; The Guardian: ‘Lame duck’ Bush faces struggle to push through new agenda; The Telegraph: Allies desert ‘lame duck president’; Dan Froomkin: How lame a duck?)

A few voices ran against the media herd, but looked like wishful thinkers. (Christian Science Monitor: Bush’s lame-duck advantage.)

But on Friday, Stephen Moore of the Wall Street Journal, and Steve Huntley of the Chicago Sun-Times (apparently independently) noted that Bush hasn’t had a bad 2007 at all. Moore’s item is worth quoting in its entirety:

Bush on the Comeback Trail

Just as Newt Gingrich was the best thing that ever happened to Bill Clinton, so Nancy Pelosi has become a great political asset to George W. Bush. Mr. Bush is on a roll legislatively and even his poll numbers are inching up while Congress’s have sunk into the teens. There’s nothing like having a foil in Congress to rehabilitate a president. Just ask Harry Truman.

This time last year it would have been inconceivable that Mr. Bush would have a successful 2007, or that Nancy Pelosi and the Democratic Congress would have fewer than one-in-four voters approving their performance. I’ve made a list of Mr. Bush’s policy victories over the Democrats:

1. S-CHIP — Mr. Bush vetoed the Democrats’ bill expanding middle-class health care subsidies and Democrats were unable to override that veto.
2. Alternative Minimum Tax — Democrats passed AMT reform without the offsetting tax hikes they had threatened.
3. Energy bill — What was a monster at the beginning of the year is now just a fairly harmless CAFE standards bill. Environmentalists are fuming.
4. Hate Crimes Legislation — Mr. Bush blocked it. The Congressional Black Caucus is furious.
5. War funding — Mr. Bush prevailed without any pull-out date. At the start of the year this looked impossible.
6. The Budget — Mr. Bush mostly prevailed on domestic spending totals.
7. No new taxes — all of the Democratic tax proposals were killed, including tobacco taxes, hedge fund taxes and energy company taxes.

It pretty much looks like the White House ran the table. Merry Christmas, Madam Speaker.

As I’ve noted before, US economic and foreign policies matter most to me as a foreigner: whether Americans permit gays to be married, guns to be carried or God to be harried doesn’t keep me up at night.

During the 2004 presidential elections, I said to a friend that perhaps the US needs a presidential term under a Democrat, if only to remind the people in general (and Republican voters in particular) that the Democrats aren’t very good at low taxes, low spending, light-touch environmental regulation and effective foreign policy. Either a John Kerry in 2004, or a Hillary Clinton in 2008, would achieve this goal, and as a result, cement the longer-term rise of the GOP. It now appears that Nancy Pelosi, the San Francisco leftist in charge of the ineffectual Democratic Congress, may have achievedachieve this in just two years. Especially if the Democrats nominate Clinton (admittedly, Dennis Kucinich would do too), my money’s on a Republican presidential election win just less than a year from now.

Update: Repaired a grammatic blunder in stating Nancy Pelosi’s term: either she “may have achieved it in just one year”, or she “may achieve it in just two years” — my phrasing was inconsistent, and the former may yet be undone by a sparkling Congressional performance in 2008 (when Martians may land and I may win the lottery).

Zimbabwe’s ambassador to the US, Machivenyika Mapuranga, speaks to Foreign Policy TV about his nation and its inclusion in the 2007 failed state index at number four, after Sudan, Iraq and Somalia. (Hat tip: This is Zimbabwe.) It’s all a plot, of course. Things are just fine. In fact, Zimbabwe is one of the strongest and well-organised states in Africa. It rocks, it rolls, and shimmies to the beat. If racist homosexual colonialist imperialist in Britain and the US didn’t ban the export of harps to Zim, it would be heaven!

Sadly, the fellow speaks some truth:

In Africa, Zimbabwe is not regarded as a failed state. We are greatly loved and admired by the other 53 African countries.

Including by Zimbabwe itself, one assumes.

The United Nations voted Zimbabwe to be the chairing country of the United Nations Commission on Sustainable Development. … They wouldn’t do that to a failed state!

Actually they would. And they did. Someone should abolish that impotent, corrupt and downright offensive charade of an organisation.

One day, our government’s tolerance for autocratic and downright tyrannical leaders is going to come back and bite us, hard. One day, our foreign policy, too often motivated by simplistic antipathy towards America in particular and the liberal Western democracies in general, is going to hurt our national interests badly. It could be simple racism, but more likely, there’s a deeper psychological trauma in evidence here. Understandable though this resentment might be, it isn’t pretty, and it isn’t good for our country.

This essay by James Kirchick, first published in Azure, a Jewish publication, was picked up by the influential Wall Street Journal editorial pages. Excerpt:

That Mr. Mandela has comported himself so comfortably with dictators is more than hypocritical–it is a betrayal of the principles for which he languished twenty-seven years in prison. Yet while Mr. Mandela’s grandstanding with tyrants is regrettable, it has been far less serious than his ANC successors’ strategic and systematic support for a broadly anti-Western agenda.

Even if one takes it whence it comes and assumes only half of it is true, it sure appears we’re on the wrong side of many major issues. I’m not sure this image of our new democracy is one we ought to cultivate.