In one bizarre episode, during the period of Bush's presidential campaign when the press was constantly chasing rumours about his possible cocaine use, McClellan hears a conversation in which Bush tells a friend that he can't remember if he tried cocaine when he was younger. At the time, McClellan wonders how the then-governor could not remember such a thing but portrays it now as the first inkling of Bush's penchant for self-deception.
In general, McClellan describes the president as someone who lacks inquisitiveness and is also deceitfully self-delusional. Long money quote: "As I worked closely with President Bush, I would come to believe that sometimes he convinces himself to believe what suits his needs at the moment. It is not unlike a witness in court who does not want to implicate himself in wrongdoing, but is also concerned about perjuring himself. So he says, 'I do not recall.' The witness knows no one can get into his head and prove it is not true, so this seems like a much safer course than actually lying. Bush, similarly, has a way of falling back on the hazy memory defense to protect himself from potential political embarrassment. Bush rationalizes it as being acceptable because he is not stating unequivocally anything that could be proven false. If something later is uncovered to show what he knew, then he can deny lying in his own mind."
And yet, I do feel a certain compassion for McClellan after reading a book that is full of regret, soul-searching, and shame. McClellan certainly isn't presenting himself as a hero for finally coming out against policies he once advocated. If he'd left in the middle of the CIA leak scandal, he would have given an enormous gift to the president's political opponents. It would have been the right thing to do. But I can imagine when you're in the thick of political combat, your bosses are keeping you in the dark, and you are constantly being praised for your loyalty, it can be hard to find your way to the right thing. In the end, though, that the author of this book stayed, given his strong views, still seems as puzzling as Bush's claims that he couldn't remember whether he'd once used cocaine.
John Dickerson on Scott McClelland
There had always been a sense of loss and dislocation, combined with endless renewal. It led to a seeking for far-off places, a denial of the present, a longing for a different place. They were fleeing down the Moroccon coast in one of the most embarrassing episodes of his life. He longed to write, quite what he didn't know, and after they had been marooned on that rocky island like hill, in that luxury home with that exotic queen, it always seemed that we had to find a quieter place. Their money was limited, his was always limited; and he grew to resent the trust fund of the other.
The landscape was so vivid, how exotic it all seemed. We had visited Ian Gibson in Madrid, the then celebrated biographer of the Spanish poet Garcia Lorca. We had drunk red wine and been ceaselessly entwined. This was everything he had ever wanted. A life of adventure and intellectual intrigue, of celebrity and natural ease, of purpose. He had always loved Madrid, long before this, when the footsteps echoed on the stony roads and ancient buildings towered over him. He was so tiny, he was so lost, but at least he had the courage to get lost.
Now that we were lost, entirely lost, in a remote time puddle he could never have predicted, those days seem charged, as if lived by a different person. We chased Gibson down, the two journalists from Australia, although in truth we hadn't done much journalism. Part of it was we just wanted an excuse to meet people, their idols, his literary idols. They had been so full of so many things, those torrid days in Madrid. The bars were a nightly discourse. We were determined to have fun, whatever went on between us; and the others, always the others. Eternally cuckolded. Except sometimes rivers ran backward.
We used to think we were so sophisticated, way back then in the 1980s, with all our modern attitudes and pushing of frontiers, women's collectives, the new male, all the barriers pushed. Style, we thought we had style, as we blundered our way into famous people's lives, in this case Gibson's. He did the interview and then invited us to dinner with his family, which was exactly what we had hoped. There was fame and there was gratification, even if it was only to an audience of two. These things were all part of an unwritten history. Everything has changed. The web has changed everything. But back then, way back then, ours was an heroic if manipulative triumph.
There in that gloomy apartment looking down on to the King's old palace. When everything was intense, as it was meant to be. When everything was together and there was barely a moment alone. When everything was exotic, as if for the first time, the entertaining destiny we were meant to fulfil on the path to our own no doubt considerable achievements. If one could see around the corner. If we had only known those moments wouldn't last, dinner with a literary celebrity, or caught for weeks in a luxury house overlooking a strange, rocky landscape. Or dashing down the coast because we heard of a place that sounded like fun. Or the way we walked the promenade in Cadiz, and thought life would always be this good.
He was filling in the gaps for he knew not what purpose. Times would die with the people who lived them. There wasn't any way to argue around that. He knew the written word carried with it the first drafts of history; although the sweep of things had expanded inexorably during his lifetime. So much was rough cuts, so much was arbitrary. So much mattered for what in the end would matter little. Those first drafts of 1980, the magazines, the news papers, already look like a primitive amateur hour; so much has changed. To see it now shocks him, for at the time it all seemed so plausible, advanced, cutting edge you could almost say. And now they look like dags from a daggy world, poorly dressed with bad hair cuts. Just as everything seemed possible then, so everything seems possible now - just to different people. Perhaps it was ever thus.
THE BIGGER STORY:
http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/dear-me-della-penned-iguanas-apology/2008/06/12/1212863836628.html
JOHN DELLA BOSCA wrote the apology that Iguanas Waterfront issued to him and which Morris Iemma used to justify not sacking him as education minister over allegations that he abused and threatened nightclub staff.
The venue's owners would not comment yesterday but sources close to Iguanas confirmed that Mr Della Bosca faxed the apology he wanted to restaurant management, who then signed and issued it to the minister without any wording being changed.
The Premier admitted on Tuesday that he relied only on the apology to Mr Della Bosca from the general manager of Iguanas - delivered after at least four phone calls from the minister to the owners - and a statement from Mr Della Bosca in deciding not to sack or stand him down.
http://www.news.com.au/story/0,23599,23856409-2,00.html
REBEL Labor MPs in NSW are canvassing an all-out assault on Premier Morris Iemma's leadership, touting the option of a new "dream team" of former minister Carmel Tebbutt and rising star Nathan Rees.
The speculation comes as police prepare to interview top minister John Della Bosca and his hothead Federal MP wife Belinda Neal over the Iguanas nightclub scandal.
Senior party figures also predict the anger-prone Ms Neal will lose preselection for her seat of Robertson before the next election.
The push for new leadership is being driven by left-wing MPs and elements within the Right. Mr Iemma is seen by powerbrokers in his own party to have failed in four key areas:
http://www.news.com.au/heraldsun/story/0,21985,23855319-5000117,00.html
Andrew Bolt:
ALWAYS happy to donate to a worthy cause - widows, orphans, lepers. But to give $70 million to the emperors of Toyota?
Toyota? Which in the first three months of this year alone raked in another $3 billion in profits, and apologised it was so little?
But there the Brumby and Rudd governments were this week, tipping our sweated millions into that bulging Kenzo bag of billions - a little "encouragement" for those hard-up men of Toyota to help them find their Gucci feet and build 10,000 of their new hybrid Camrys in Altona.
You want more proof that governments do worst when they play at picking business winners? That business welfare is so often just politicians feeding berley to piranhas?
Then subject this latest example to some basic questions.
Will assembling this new car here from foreign parts create lots more Australian jobs?
No, just 200, or one for every $350,000 of government subsidy.
Did we badly need those 200 jobs?
Are you kidding? We're so short of labour the Rudd Government wants to import 5000 unskilled Pacific Islanders.
Dog at Sydney Park, Sydney, Australia.
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