BY GEORGE WEEKS
The Washington Post says Scott McClellan, before his trumpeted tell-all book dumping on the president he once defended, "was the ultimate Bush loyalist." Now, the former press secretary for George W. Bush is the ultimate Judas.
While McClellan seems to have nailed it (I've read only excerpts of his book) in saying Bush waged a "political propaganda campaign" in favor of the Iraq war and bungled the response to Hurricane Katrina, why, oh why, when he was resident propagandist, did he not take the honorable course taken by ex-White House Press Secretary Jerry terHorst?
What a contrast in class.
A former Washington bureau chief for the Detroit News and longtime friend of Gerald R. Ford dating back to Ford's congressional days (McClellan was a longtime friend and political flack for Bush in Texas), terHorst resigned after a month as Ford's first press secretary over the pardon of ex-President Richard Nixon.
An hour before Ford's telecast announcing the pardon, terHorst handed Ford a manila envelope with a single sheet of typed White House stationary that said:
--¦ It is with great regret, after long soul-searching, that I must inform you that I cannot in good conscience support your decision to pardon former President Richard Nixon even before he has been charged with the commission of any crime. As your spokesman I do not know how I could credibly defend that action in the absence of a like decision to grant absolute pardons to the young men who evaded Vietnam military service as a matter of conscience and the absence of pardons for former aides and associates of Mr. Nixon who have been charged with crimes -- and imprisoned -- stemming from the same Watergate situation."
Ford was stunned. But, as Thomas DeFrank wrote in "Write It When I'm Gone," based on the author's remarkable off-the-record-until-I-die conversations with Ford, "he couldn't talk his press secretary into reconsidering. Ford wished him well, but their relationship never recovered."
It wasn't cool for terHorst to zing Ford just before going on national TV, but at least he made his point privately and not, as McClellan, with shilling of a book after leaving the White House.
As Mary Matalin, a former aide to Vice President Dick Cheney who, like McClellan, has been on presidential campaigns in Michigan, said in the Wall Street Journal: "This will stand as the epitome, the ultimate breach of that (loyalty) code of honor."
During decades with UPI and the Detroit News, I dealt with many White House press secretaries, but had only a nodding encounter with McClellan.
What he says should be said. But the turncoat's timing is questionable.
Better to do as terHorst did. If you can't credibly defend, if the glove doesn't fit, you can't acquit.
