McClellan: Bush played Washington game

Former White House press secretary Scott McClellan on Friday said President Bush failed to transform Washington’s political games and ended up playing them instead.

McClellan, in widely anticipated testimony to the House Judiciary Committee, said he believed Bush would be the kind of leader to change how Washington works when he started working for him in Texas.

{mosads}“Unfortunately, like many good people who come to Washington, he ended up playing the game by the existing rules rather than transforming it,” McClellan said.

The spokesman-turned-author also went on the attack against GOP critics of his book, What Happened: Inside the Bush White House and Washington’s Culture of Deception, which contends the administration misled the American public about why it went to war in Iraq.

“There is no more recent example of this unsavory side of politics than the initial reaction from some in Washington to my book,” he said. “Instead of engaging in a reasoned, rational and honest examination of the issues raised, some sought to turn it into a game of ‘gotcha,’ misrepresenting what I wrote and seeking to discredit me through inaccurate personal attacks on me and my motives.”

McClellan told the committee he does not believe President Bush was directly involved in the leaking of CIA agent Valerie Plame’s identity to the press, but said there is a “cloud that remains over the vice president’s office” as a result of the incident.

“I do not think the president, in any way, had knowledge about [the leak], based on my conversations with him back at that time,” McClellan told Judiciary panel Chairman John Conyers Jr. (D-Mich.).

“In terms of the vice president, I do not know; there is a lot of suspicion there. As Patrick Fitzgerald said in the trial of [former chief of staff to Vice President Dick Cheney] Scooter Libby, there is a cloud that remains over the vice president’s office, but it’s because Scooter Libby put it there by lying and obstructing justice.”

McClellan so far has made no shocking revelations during his opening remarks or his initial responses to questions from committee members, sticking largely to his prepared remarks, which themselves were confined to the charges he has already leveled in print.

And, in fact, the initial round of questions from Republicans on the committee were intended to blast McClellan and the Democrats for putting on an substance-free show that would do nothing to further implicate any White House officials in either the Plame leak or the administration’s use of pre-Iraq war intelligence.

“Welcome to the Judiciary Committee’s first book-of-the-month-club meeting,” quipped ranking Republican Lamar Smith (Texas).

McClellan so far has remained the very poised character he was behind the White House press office podium. He smiled widely when escorted into the hearing behind Conyers, shook hands with Republicans on the committee and made a brief but unmistakable acknowledgment of the press corps.

McClellan’s statement and other documents from the Judiciary hearing can be found at the The Hill’s Briefing Room blog .