McClellan "A Victim, A Pawn, Or A P.R. Disaster"...

Vanity Fair Michael Wolff April 4, 2006 at 10:03 PM
READ MORE: George W. Bush, Scott McClellan, Karl Rove

Scott McClellan -- a pleasant, low-wattage, old-before-his-time young fellow, with, at 38, a wife, no children, and "two dogs and four cats" -- the living symbol of this White House's profound and, perhaps, mortal problem with language and meaning. McClellan himself, as though having some terrible social disability, has, standing miserably in the press briefing room every day, become a kick-me archetype. He's Piggy in Lord of the Flies: a living victim, whose reason for being is, apparently, to shoulder public ridicule and pain (or, come to think of it, he's Squealer from Animal Farm). He's the person nobody would ever choose to be.

His daily march into hostile territo-ry, without any of the available diver-sions and protections that a basic presentation-software package might provide, is so fraught that it must be a cunning setup--diabolical Karl Rove at it again. If not, it's a remarkable, defining lack of self-awareness on the part of the heretofore all-controlling Bush administration.

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