Interview: Scott McClellan and Marc Ginsberg

 

James Silver

 

email

print

Also in this section:

• Stars in the ascendant: Barack and Cameron and the transatlantic political divide

Tim Shipman

Former White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan caused shockwaves with his criticism of George Bush in his memoirs. Marc Ginsberg was the US Ambassador to Morocco. Both talk to James Silver about controversy and the US presidential campaign.

 

When George W Bush scrawls his signature on his final batch of Christmas cards as President in under six months time, one long-time loyalist will be missing from the approved list. Scott McClellan, who ran the White House press operation between July 2003 and August 2006 recently published a book about his stint in the Bush boiler-room. As its title suggests, "What Happened: Inside the Bush White House and Washington's Culture of Deception" levels a number of hard-hitting accusations at the current administration.

 

Among them, McClellan claims his former boss and his team used "propaganda" and "a lack of candour" about "the packaging of intelligence" to sell the Iraq war and claims that he was misled by two key Bush aides - senior advisor Karl Rove and Lewis "Scooter" Libby, the Vice President's chief of staff - over their role in the disclosure of former CIA operative Valerie Plame's identity, so in turn he misinformed the White House press corps.

 

While the affable and cherub-faced Texan has yet officially to be declared a member of the Axis of Evil, he is certainly a pariah in Republican circles now. Over the last few weeks, he has been subjected to sustained character-assassination in the media by a host of party stalwarts and elders.

 

In an email, former Senate Majority Leader and Presidential candidate Bob Dole branded him "a miserable creature" and "a weasel", while Texas Congressman Lamar Smith likened him to Judas, accusing him of "selling out the President and his friends for a few pieces of silver".

 

For its part, the Bush administration peddled the line that 40-year-old McClellan was plainly "disgruntled about his experience at the White House.

 

As he sits down for an interview with Total Politics in the central London offices of communications consultancy APCO Worldwide, the public servant-turned-stone-in-the-Presidential-shoe, says: "These weren't easy things to write, given my personal closeness to the President."

 

He was, he claims, taken aback by the ferocity of the attacks he has faced. "It's interesting that no one's disputing the themes and perspectives in the book. Instead, some of my critics attacked me personally without reading it. To them, I say let's have a discussion about the issues raised, rather than engage in these negative tactics and personal attacks. It almost makes my point for me - that Washington needs to move beyond 'Gotcha politics'."

 

Settling into a chair beside him is Marc Ginsberg, formerly United States ambassador to Morocco and a foreign affairs adviser in both the Carter and Clinton administrations. A die-hard Democrat, he beams across the table at this Bush insider-turned-whistleblower. "This guy's been very brave, I'm telling you," he says. "If they gave out Purple Hearts for politics, he would get one." McClellan mumbles "thank you" and looks down bashfully.

 

The most damning and significant claims in 'What Happened', which at the time of writing sits in second place on the New York Times bestseller list, concern the Bush White House's handling of the case for the invasion of Iraq. While McClellan emphasizes that he does not think there was a conspiracy to lie to the American people, he says the President, whom he still likes and admires, was guilty of "self-deception" and using "propaganda" to speed up the push to war.

 

"All politicians sometimes get caught up in, and believe in, their own spin. I do not think there was a bunch of people sitting around a table saying let's go out and deliberately mislead the American people. But - call it propaganda, call it a political marketing-campaign - instead they looked at the intelligence and what best made their case and in doing so they left out the qualifications and caveats. Saddam was certainly guilty of many things, but by overstating the intelligence, we made the threat he posed sound like a grave and gathering danger."

 

Austin-born McClellan, who talks fast with a Texan twang in his voice, continues: "When you're going to war, the most consequential decision a president can make, you've got to be open and truthful about the situation as best you know it - about the consequences, the risk and the cost and we weren't. As a result, the American people's expectations were out of whack. They expected that [the Iraq war] would be much shorter, with a relatively lower cost in terms of lives lost, which is why the President's popularity has remained so low, for so long."

 

Such comments, needless to say, have been viewed by the Republican establishment as hard to stomach, particularly coming from a man who has served Bush since his days as Governor of Texas. They also beg the question, how come, if he felt so strongly, he did not resign on principle at the time?

 

Indeed, his predecessor, Ari Fleischer, wryly noted in a press statement on the publication of "What Happened": "For two and-a-half-years Scott and I worked shoulder-to-shoulder at the White House. Not once did [he] approach me - privately or publicly - to discuss any misgivings he had about the war in Iraq or the manner in which the White House made the case for war."

 

Now McClellan replies: "I had different views back then. Like many Americans I gave the administration the benefit of the doubt in the build-up to the war, when I was serving as deputy press secretary. I was concerned we were rushing into it, but at the same time I trusted the President's team, they were highly regarded in the wake of Afghanistan. We were in the post-9/11 environment and the administration was saying this is an urgent threat we needed to deal with. I now feel that trust was misplaced.

 

"Regarding the book, I had to step back and separate my personal closeness with the President to his policies and governance and take a clear-eyed look at it all. And it's hard to do it when you're inside the White House."

 

Has he spoken to Bush since publication? "No, I haven't," he says quickly.

 

Does he expect to speak to him again? "I dunno. I hope some day..." He pauses. "I hope some day when everybody can step back from this, maybe he'll have the chance to read the book, see where I'm coming from. Some portrayed this as a very scathing account, but when people actually read it, they see that it's actually a serious and thoughtful look, not only about what happened to take this administration so badly off course, but it also shows some of the problems surrounding the Washington culture."

 

Some commentators have claimed that McClellan was not really kept 'in the loop' with senior members of the administration and that he did not even attend daily communications meetings. He vehemently denies this. "Absolutely I attended them. I don't know where that story came from. In fact, I attended policy briefings, most world leader meetings and congressional meetings and so forth.

 

"But one of my concerns in the book is that sometimes the big, consequential decisions were made outside of those meetings. They were made in small groups of two or three people with the President, which is a tough spot for a spokesman to be in."

 

Rumours abound that McClellan is poised to jump ship to the Democrats and vote for Obama in the Presidential election. All he will say for now is: "I haven't made a decision yet. I will think about it very carefully."

Next to him, Ambassador Ginsberg imitates a fisherman reeling in a prize catch. We've almost got him his broad smile seems to say.

 

At that point Ginsberg joins the interview and the conversation moves on to the forthcoming presidential race.

 

What lessons does he think the Obama campaign - of which he will be a part - will take from the current administration's travails?

 

"Look, the American people are...disenchanted is too kind a word... with the last eight years," he says. "They want to turn the page on this administration. They want a government who is responsive to its needs and that understands the pain they are going through economically right now.

 

"So the big lessons are, first, given the foreign policy challenges the US faces abroad, the next president needs to level with the American people about what is possible and what isn't. After 9/11, they wanted us to vanquish Al Qaeda. We haven't done that yet.

 

"Second, they expect their government to be responsive to disasters domestically. [Hurricane] Katrina was an unmitigated disaster for the Bush administration in terms of the image of the role of government in the lives of people. Any president is going to have to make sure - given the floods in the Mississippi valley right now - that the government is there to defend them from harm, domestically as well as internationally.

 

"And the third lesson is that we need our friends. We need allies and friends around the world. To this day, Americans can't understand how the Bush administration made us so disliked and distrusted around the world. The next president is going to have to rebuild those alliances."

 

He glances at McClellan, who seamlessly picks up the baton. The pair only recently met but their rapport is obvious.

 

"The public are dismayed with the poisonous, polarized climate in Washington right now," he says. "The current administration contributed to that, but it's been building for some time. Americans are looking for someone authentic, someone who can be candid with them about the problems they face, someone who can unite the parties and the country, and I think that's reflected in these two candidates.

 

"Senator Obama has run on the theme of changing the way Washington works. Senator McCain has talked about ending the "permanent campaign", that's governing as if you are always running for office. I don't know that you can end it, but you can minimize its negative influences, where it's always focused on trying to manipulate the narrative to your advantage, rather than bipartisan deliberation and compromise."

 

His repeated call for "bipartisan compromise" and an end to "Gotcha politics" could make McClellan - who was Bush's travelling press secretary in 2000 and thus campaign-hardened - sound a touch naive. However, he goes on to make a clear distinction between the need for cooperation across the aisle, while governing and the street-fighting nature of the presidential campaign poised to get underway.

 

"The battle will be for the middle ground and both candidates recognize that very well," he says. "More than anything else what's going to decide who gets that centre ground is not necessarily what they're advocating, but how they paint their opponent. The McCain campaign is going to paint Senator Obama as too liberal, as out of touch with middle-America and as someone who doesn't represent mainstream values. The Obama campaign will paint Senator McCain as someone who would be a third term of the Bush presidency, asserting that he's the same on Iraq, the same on some of the energy policies, healthcare and..." He pauses.

 

"Taxes," prompts Ginsberg, his deep voice cutting across.

 

"And taxes," agrees McClellan. "Obama says McCain was originally against the Bush tax-cuts, now he's embraced them. And McCain will point to votes and stands that Obama has taken that are to the left of the centre of America."

 

Ginsberg was "very much involved" in John Kerry's bruising battle with Bush for the presidency in 2004, during which the Democrat challenger was mortally wounded by the "swift-boat" campaign, which saw Vietnam naval veterans form a partisan group to discredit Kerry's military record and fitness for office. He says he expects this campaign to be a similarly dirty fight.

 

"The difference this time is that we've learned our lesson," he says. "There is now what I would call a nano-second reaction mechanism that has been built into the Obama campaign. There is not one attack which has not gone unanswered within minutes. We're certainly not going to stand by and let Obama get swift-boated by any Republican or Republican-affiliated organisation.

 

"And there are a number of hate groups around the United States who are going to make this a racist campaign if they can. We're ready to fight them tooth and nail."

 

He leans back in his chair. "In fact," he says defiantly, "we are eager to take them on."