What Happened

There will be those who will tell you that What Happened is another Bush Basher. There will be those who will dismiss it as the work of a disgruntled employee who's sticking it the the President. There will be those who will tell you that this book is about the campaign formulation that convinced the American public to enter Iraq.

All these diminish the importance of the work, what McClellan has uncovered is a subject that Keith Olbermann and even the people in Congress rarely focus on. What McClellan articulates is an odious culture of deception that is note the highlight of the Bush Administrion but of Washington itself. He bashes the Clinton White House a great deal and perhaps with more condemnation than with the Bush White House. There seems to be more regret than fire and brimstone when it comes to his recollections of the failures of the Bush Administraiton.

The Permanent Campaign mentality of Washington is even more dangerous because whether Obama or McCain wins, that mentality will still be in place. The mentality that even after the Presidency is won, everything must be done in anticipation of the next campaign to stay in office or in relation of keeping the party in power. This undermines the very fabric and purpose of the Presidency and the government itself. People are elected to these offices to serve the public not to work in tandem with others so they can get reelected or they can keep their party in power. Don't get me wrong, I'm not naive enough to believe that these people aren't politicians, but according to McClellan, the integrity of the government itself had been compromised by a focus on maintaining power rather than maintaining a stable that progressed during a President's tenure.

We need someone who's experienced enough to resist this kind of partisanship and shape a Presidency that will drive Congress to act in the best interest of America rather than the best interest of a political party. Obama is more like Bush than he'd care to admit; he's as inexperienced as Bush was considered to be back in 2000; don't ask me though, I was too young to know.

The point is, only someone like John McCain would know how to resist this kind of temptation to fall into partisan politics. Obama is more inexpereinced than Bush was when he began the Presidency; how could he possibly solidify any true amount of change if he could so easily fall prety to the pitfalls that McClellan has outlined?

Really though, no matter who attains the Presidency, they must rise above this permanent campaign mentality. We know what happened. We know the cause. Now let's do something different.

Thank you, Mr. McClellan.