"Just a quick observation," said Jon Stewart on the Daily Show last night. He had just shown a montage of nervous Republicans reciting the Karl Rove talking point that they didn’t want to “play the blame game” when questioned about the jaw-droppingly inept response of the Bush Administration to the Katrina disaster. "I think it’s something Aristotle said," Stewart continued. "When people don’t want to play the blame game — THEY’RE TO BLAME!"

And none of the Karl Rove-George Bush spokesmodels have been pounded more relentlessly on that point than White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan (right) at daily press briefings. Understandably, the job of any While House press secretary is to cast the sunniest light on an administration’s doings, short of giving the press false information, but not exempting lawyerly mischaracterizations of the facts. The press understands this and competent reporters will compensate for it, parsing the rhetoric for their readers and often noting what is not being said as having equal weight with what is.

However, this gentlemanly contract was broken last July when McClellan was caught in an outright lie. He had mislead the press on the involvement of Bush mastermind Karl Rove in the outing of a CIA agent — an act, technically, of treason. After months of reassuring the press pool that Rove had nothing to do with the politically motivated outing, at one point vouching for the “integrity” of a man who was a master at sliming opposing candidates with spurious homosexual allegations, calling him “a fine person” (amusingly Bush’s nickname for Rove is the more accurate “Turd Blossom”), McClellan was reduced to uneasy shuffling and dissembling at the podium: Karl Rove had just admitted under oath, and under the advice of council, that in fact he had outed the agent.

That was July. Since then, it’s been a Scott McClellan Demolition Derby in the White House press room, Gone is the clubby spirit of bonhomie. The press now picks apart McClellan’s non-answers and talking-point gloss-overs with a positively vengeful relish.

For those of us who love to watch butterball Republicans getting the public ass-reamings they so richly deserve, the gladiatorial gore of these last few days has been sheer heaven. The amateur-grade lying that is coming out of the White House in the aftermath of Katrina has turbo-charged this press corps — some with eyewitness experience of the four days of Administration inaction in New Orleans, a nightmare spectacle all of America watched over a long Labor Day weekend with nothing else on TV. And so it’s one swing after another at “Piñata Boy” (as McClellan is now known to the press corps).

But don’t shed any tears for Scotty. He’s a total pile of brazen obliviousness - in other words, a pro at press relations. Note how he continues to give non-answers, invoke the “blame game ” and inject the outrageous phrase “what we did right” into his answers.

From the September 6 White House press briefing:

Q: Are you saying the President is — is confident that his administration is prepared to adequately, confidently secure the American people in the event of a terrorist attack of a level that we have not seen? And based on what does he have that confidence?

McCLELLAN: Yes, and that’s what he made clear earlier today, that obviously we want to look and learn lessons from a major catastrophe of this nature.

Q: Yes, but you’re telling us today there will be time for that somewhere down the road. Well, what if it happens tomorrow?

McCLELLAN: We can engage in this blame-gaming going on and I think that’s what you’re getting —

Q: No, no. That’s a talking point, Scott, and I think most people who are watching this —

McCLELLAN: No, that’s a fact. I mean, some are wanting to engage in that, and we’re going to remain focused —

Q: I’m asking a direct question. Is he confident —

McCLELLAN: We’re going to remain focused on the people.

Q: – that he can secure the American people in the event of a major terrorist attack?

McCLELLAN: We are securing the American people by staying on the offensive abroad and working to spread freedom and democracy in the Middle East.

Q: That’s a talking point. That’s a talking point.

McCLELLAN: No, that’s a fact. [Points to another reporter] Go ahead.

Q: No, it’s not. …

[snip]

Q: First, just to get you on the record, where does the buck stop in this administration?

McCLELLAN: The President.

Q: All right. So he will be held accountable as the head of the government for the federal response that he’s already acknowledged was inadequate and unacceptable?

McCLELLAN: The President’s most important responsibility is the safety and security of the American people. He talks about that often. That is his most important responsibility. Again, there’s going to be plenty of time to look at the facts and determine what went wrong and what went right and how the coordination was between the state and federal and local authorities. Right now we’ve got to continue doing everything we can in support of the ongoing operational activities on the ground in the region to help people.

Q: Well, the President has said that this government can do many things at once: It can fight the war on terror, it can do operations in Iraq, and aid and comfort people in Louisiana. Can it not also find time to begin to hold people accountable? It sounds, Scott, as if the line that you’re giving us — which is, you don’t want to answer questions about accountability because there’s too much busy work going on —

McCLELLAN: Wrong. No, wrong.

Q: — is a way of ducking accountability.

McCLELLAN:: You don’t want to take away from the efforts that are going on right now. And if you start getting into that now, you’re pulling people out that are helping with the ongoing response, Terry. Not at all. The President made it very clear, I’m going to lead this effort and we’re going to make sure we find out what the facts were and what went wrong and what went right. But you don’t want to divert resources away from an ongoing response to a major catastrophe. And this is a major catastrophe that we — and we must remain focused on saving lives and sustaining lives and planning for the long-term. And that’s what we’re doing.

Q: And there are people in Louisiana and Mississippi who are doing that job very well. Your job is to answer the questions.

McCLELLAN: And I have.

Q: By saying you won’t answer.

McCLELLAN: No, by saying that there’s a time to look at those issues, but now is not the time, Terry.

“Meanwhile, rank and file members of the press corps are increasingly frustrated with McClellan. One reporter suggested that they get T shirts made up emblazoned with one of Tuesday’s more goading questions: “Is ‘Brownie’ still doing a heck of a job?”
                                                                            Dan Froomkin, Washington Post