Earlier today, Karl Rove was asked about some of the charges leveled by former White House Press Sec. Scott McClellan in his new memoir. Here's what Rove said:
Well, look, it goes to show how out of the loop he was, that he didn't think we spent much time together.
Media accounts of the book suggest this directly echoes McClellan's description of his time in the White House. For example,
He reveals that he was pushed to leave earlier than he had planned, and he displays some bitterness about that as well as about being sometimes kept out of the loop on key decision-making sessions.
That sounded awfully familiar, so I hit up the Google, and lo and behold...
WASHINGTON (October 1, 1998) -- Mike McCurry gave his last daily briefing Thursday, winding up his four-year tour as presidential press secretary. But the affable McCurry leaves behind a lingering mystery: How can a man who denies, obfuscates and beats up on reporters be so popular with the White House press corps?
...McCurry has been the public face of the White House spin machine, the first spokesman to allow his daily briefings to be televised. He's bobbed and weaved his way through plenty of scandals. But when the Monica Lewinsky story broke, McCurry proudly proclaimed himself to be "out of the loop." He couldn't respond to questions about President Clinton and the intern -- in fact, he didn't want to know the answers.
We now have 2 White House Press Secretaries in as many administrations claiming that they were "out of the loop" on some of the defining moments and issues of the administration they were paid to represent to the public.
The White House Press Secretary is a position just one level below a Presidential Cabinet appointment. The individual who holds that position is paid a considerable sum of money by the taxpayers keep them informed about things that are happening within their own government. We are paying them to keep us informed. They might serve at the pleasure of the president, but they work for us. So I cannot help but ask...
If the White House Press Secretary is almost always deliberately kept out of the loop of the most important things happening in the White House, what the hell is the point of even having the position? I realize that everyone seems to have accepted the idea that these people are paid to lie to us, but even if it makes me seem naive and hopelessly idealistic, I have not. And I will not. I simply refuse to.
Either the White House Press Secretary needs to be kept "in the loop," or the position needs to be abolished. We don't need our own version of Baghdad Bob, do we?
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