After taking Thursday and Friday off, Scott McClellan returned to the White House press briefing room’s podium this afternoon. It didn’t go terribly well. Apparently, reporters are still rather interested in this criminal scandal and the lies they’ve been told. Go figure.
Most of the early questions dealt with the president’s goalpost-moving, which McClellan insisted was nothing of the kind.
Q: Scott, the President seemed to raise the bar and add a qualifier today when discussing whether or not anybody would be dismissed for — in the leak of a CIA officer’s name, in which he said that he would — if someone is found to have committed a crime, they would no longer work in this administration. That’s never been part of the standard before, why is that added now?
McClellan: No, I disagree, Terry. I think that the President was stating what is obvious when it comes to people who work in the administration: that if someone commits a crime, they’re not going to be working any longer in this administration. Now the President talked about how it’s important for us to learn all the facts. We don’t know all the facts, and it’s important that we not prejudge the outcome of the investigation. We need to let the investigation continue. And the investigators are the ones who are in the best position to gather all the facts and draw the conclusions. And at that point, we will be more than happy to talk about it, as I indicated last week.
And on it went. In total, I counted 11 times in which McClellan said we do not yet have “all the facts.” What are the facts we don’t know? McClellan won’t tell us, except to say that we don’t have them. How helpful.
To explain why the White House line used to be that identified leakers would be fired but now only convicted criminals would be fired, McClellan said that we should “not read anything into it more than what the President said at this point.” In fact, he used the phrase seven times. And, for the life of me, I have no idea what he meant.
Of all the exchanges, I was particularly fond of this one.
Q: What is his problem? Two years, and he can’t call Rove in and find out what the hell is going on? I mean, why is it so difficult to find out the facts? It costs thousands, millions of dollars, two years, it tied up how many lawyers? All he’s got to do is call him in.
McClellan: You just heard from the President. He said he doesn’t know all the facts. I don’t know all the facts.
Q: Why?
McClellan: We want to know what the facts are. Because —
Q: Why doesn’t he ask him?
McClellan: I’ll tell you why, because there’s an investigation that is continuing at this point, and the appropriate people to handle these issues are the ones who are overseeing that investigation. There is a special prosecutor that has been appointed. And it’s important that we let all the facts come out.
It’s the same point raised by CBS’s Bob Schieffer yesterday, but the White House simply still has no idea how to answer it. Bush talks to Rove about a hundred times a day, every day. To hear McClellan tell it, it’s never occurred to him to just ask Rove if he leaked Plame’s identity, or more recently, why he leaked Plame’s identity.
Indeed, McClellan’s spin is that the president can’t even ask Rove because Bush isn’t one of the “appropriate people” who “handle these issues.” Huh? Does this make sense to anyone?
A week ago today was when the WH press corps erupted with questions about the Plame Game scandal. McClellan took a real beating that day and I wondered how many days and/or briefings it would take before he’d come up with a coherent, half-way-persuasive spin he was comfortable with to beat back angry reporters.
After reading today’s transcript, it’s clear McClellan isn’t there yet.