WHAT HAPPENED

This week, I talked with students in my advanced writing class about Scott McClellan and his new book, “What Happened: Inside the Bush White House and Washington's Culture of Deception.” I have yet to read the book, but wanted to talk not about Scott or the book, but about the questions being asked of Scott by the media and others. The questions shown below present an interesting study. What type of questions are they? Investigative? Accusatory? Why, in this case, do you think one type would be used more than the other? How would you rewrite an accusatory question to make it an investigative one? How do you think the rewritten question would affect the answer? “What happened to you, Scott? You are not the person I used to know.” Have you ever been asked, “What’s gotten into you? You know better than that.” What did that mean to you? That you should have known better? So, is Scott being asked a question or being admonished for knowing that you don’t betray the loyalty of others, especially the Administration? Or does the question imply that Scott has changed and that the change is not for the better? That the problem seems to be with him? “If you felt so strongly about the situation, why didn’t you tell someone? Should Scott have gone to his boss and said, “From what I observed, I believe the Administration is deliberately deceiving the public about the Iraq war.” Why shouldn’t he be forthright and lay out his concerns? He would be respected by the inner circle; furthermore, he would have protection by law if he were seen, even as a potential whistleblower. Wouldn’t he? “Then Scott, why didn’t you just quit?” Have you always been financially prepared to walk away from a prestigious, high-paying job, on principle? Was deception, assuming there was some, obvious at the start of Scott’s job. Did he open a desk drawer and suddenly find DECEPTION? Or did an attitude of deception reveal itself in people’s behavior, a little at a time, over time? “You mean, Scott, that you just kept it to yourself for three years?” Being quiet about something often is referred to as “silent consent.” Silent consent can be seen in many forms. In the military, silent consent, for example, can be when a unit is left in the jungle as a decoy to flesh out the enemy and no one in the unit says anything when it is known that the commander is risking the lives of troops to chalk up a victory in pursuit of a promotion. Silent consent is when members of the White House press corps avoid aggressive reporting for fear of losing a seat on Air Force One or being assigned to a back row in the White House briefing room. Silent consent is when members of Congress recite verbatim the Administration’s talking points in favor of war, instead of making their own assessment of whether or not to attack another country. Silent consent is when an entire nation questions the wisdom of making preemptive strikes on other countries, but does no more than watch it happen. “Scott, you were so close to the inner circle; how could you not know more specifically what was going on?” Let me ask if you know of any public relations executive who was indicted for criminal conspiracy. Could that be because the inner circle of any organization does not publish notice of, and invite its spokesperson to a meeting to discuss ways to deceive the public, cook the books, or circumvent environmental laws? Yes, criminal activity occurs. But it’s not done in the open by committee. It has been said there are times when an Administration deliberately withholds information from a press secretary to enable him or her to claim, honestly, of having no knowledge of something to maintain credibility with the media. But what of the press secretary’s duty to keep the public informed of decisions and actions of the White House? And how much integrity is left for a press corps that accepts a press secretary’s claim of no knowledge, while knowing of this charade and accepting it as protocol? Sometimes deception is a matter of like-minded individuals leading an organization with like-minded ambitions that form an invisible framework in which to operate. When one takes an action that may seem overly assertive, the others go along with it because in their private thoughts they know the ambitions embodied in the underlying framework. Tactics of the inner circle are unwritten and decisions are communicated among each other with signals, such as a raised eyebrow, a penetrating stare, meaning “get it done,” or “stay the course.” There is no tangible evidence of malicious intent, which is why it is so difficult to discover guilt of an executive in a court of law or before a Congressional hearing. You could characterize this form of wrong-doing as the mental use and abuse of power. The inner circle of every organization has choices to make about its use of power. [end]