McClellan: 144 years of Wartime Skullduggery
There has been a lot written about the recent book “What Happened” by Scott McClellan, President Bush’s former Press Secretary. I don’t think anyone captured it better than Bob Dole did in an email, not to the media, but to McClellan himself.
When I thought about it, I was stunned at the similarities with a former high-ranking official who left his job in disgrace and then lashed out at a wartime president – also named McClellan.
That of course was Union General George McClellan who served under President Abraham Lincoln.
Both McClellan’s benefited greatly from relationships that their parents had with people in high positions. General McClellan’s father was a close personal friend of General Winfield Scott and Scott McClellan’s mother has been a powerful fixture in Texas politics for years.
Both McClellan’s seemed to have had little experience or qualifications for the jobs foisted upon them. General McClellan, who was only 35 years old at the time, was certainly experienced as a soldier but had never held anything close to the level of command that Lincoln gave him.
Scott McClellan, who was also 35 in 2003 when he assumed the Secretary position, had worked in Governor Bush’s press office and later as a Deputy Press Secretary in the White House but never as the top man and certainly never in a position as intensely scrutinized as a president’s Press Secretary.
The performance of both men in these high visibility jobs was criticized almost universally.
Watching Scott McClellan face the White House press corps was painful to anybody who understands media relations and public affairs. He always appeared timid and overly cautious; could not stay on message and seemed to get easily bullied by reporters.
General McClellan’s performance during the Peninsula Campaign of 1862 has become a tactical lesson in poor command, fragmented synchronicity and being operationally uncoordinated.
He did manage a bloody draw against Lee at Antietam but Lincoln had hoped for much more than a bloody draw. McClellan outnumbered Lee 2-1 yet suffered 25% more casualties. The biggest blunder was his refusal to aggressively pursue Lee allowing the Confederate Army to escape intact.
This inaction led to Lincoln’s famous quote; “If General McClellan does not want to use the army, I would like to borrow it for a time.”
After Scott McClellan’s handling of the press during the Valerie Plame affair and particularly the Katrina aftermath, one can imagine Bush saying, “Scott if you’re not going to use that microphone, I have a pal over at Fox News.”
General McClellan was relieved of command and sent to New Jersey to await orders that never came. Scott McClellan “resigned” and went home to Texas to help with his mother’s failed race for the Governor’s office.
Then Scott comes out with a book blasting his former boss. More than that, he seemed to have flipped on any conservative principles he may have ever held. In a recent interview on MSNBC, he said that he found Barack Obama’s positions “intriguing”.
General McClellan may have found Obama intriguing as well. In 1864, he decided to run for President as a Democrat against Lincoln.
The Democrat platform of 1864 called for an immediate cessation of hostilities and a negotiated settlement with the Confederacy.
Category: Politics
Ya know, I did think of the comparison and decided it was a bit thin. However, you did make it interesting. Thanks.
To reinforce the analogy. One of George McClellan’s major failings, aside from his tactical and operatinal blundering on the Peninsula, was his incessant temporizing and refusal to act. He kept explaining that his army was not large enough, and he had to train it better and better before actively moving against Lee. This sounds hauntingly like those critics who have criticized Bush, Rumsfeld, and Franks for defeating the Iraqi Army and seizing Baghdad without delaying until they had assembled a McClellan-sized force.